The German-Polish theater scholar Katarzyna Wielga-Skolimowska will be the new artistic director of the German Federal Cultural Foundation.
She succeeds Hortensia Völckers, who has led the foundation since its inception twenty years ago and who is retiring in the fall.
Wielga-Skolimowska worked after her studies at the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw.
From 2013 to 2016 she was head of the Polish Cultural Institute in Berlin before she was dismissed by the foreign minister of the then newly elected PiS government.
She then worked at the Federal Agency for Political Education and at the Munich headquarters of the Goethe Institute.
Since autumn 2020, Wielga-Skolimowska has headed the Goethe-Institut's liaison office in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, which is to prepare the establishment of an independent location.
The Federal Cultural Foundation based in Halle supports projects and programs in Germany and abroad with an annual budget of 35 million euros from the budget of Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth.
The "cultural beacons" that receive permanent grants include the Kasseler Documenta, the Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, the Donaueschinger Musiktage, the Berlin Theatertreffen and the Ensemble Modern.