Polymathic curator and author Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung has been appointed director of Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Ndikung will take the reins from departing director Bernd M. Scherer on January 1, 2023.

 “As an internationally sought-after renowned curator and cultural manager, Bonaventure Ndikung is a perfect fit for the Haus der Kulturen der Welt,” said state culture minister

Monika Grütters, chair of the supervisory board of the KBB, in a statement. “With his excellent network, his scientific education, and his passion for art, he is virtually predestined to further develop this institution, which is unique in Europe. In doing so, he can build on the strong foundation that Bernd Scherer and his team have established.”

The Cameroon-born Ndikung, who holds a doctorate degree in medical biotechnology and a postdoc degree in biophysics, is the founder and director of noted Berlin gallery Savvy Contemporary and a professor in the spatial strategies master’s program at Berlin’s Weißensee School of Art. He was the artistic director of the 2020 Sonsbeek biennial in Amsterdam; that same year, he received the Order of Merit of Berlin, the city-state’s highest honor. In 2019, he served as artistic director of the Bamako Encounters photography biennial and curated Finland’s pavilion at the Fifty-Eighth Venice Biennale. In 2017, he was curator at large for Adam Szymzczyk’s much-dicussed Documenta 14.

“Berlin is home to citizens from 190 nations, and these people must be fundamental in the future structuring of a house of world cultures, as fellow travelers and co-creators of a house of complexity, of analysis of the diverse asymmetries of the world and ultimately of reconciliation of cultures,” said Ndikung in a statement. “I am very much looking forward to working with the team at the HKW, my colleagues at the KBB and, of course, the artists, cultural workers and scholars from all over the world.”