DIRECTOR OF FRANKFURT’S ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEUM ABRUPTLY FIRED

With no explanation, the city of Frankfurt has abruptly dismissed Clémentine Deliss, the director of the Weltkulturen Museum, an institution that features a collection of sixty-seven thousand artifacts from Oceania, North, South, and Central America, South East Asia, and Africa, according to Hyperallergic’s Benjamin Sutton. The German press has quoted everything from “problematic financial management” to an “extremely tense” dynamic between Deliss and the museum’s staff.

“She brought an exciting new approach to Weltkulturen Museum and above all brought to it a sense of living culture that I could only think benefitted the museum and its public, as well as its collections,” Juan Gaitan, the director of Mexico City’s Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, told Sutton.

Gaitan was among many who seemed surprised by Deliss’s dismissal, given “the transformative impact she has had at the Weltkulturen Museum,” in Sutton’s words. Under Deliss’s leadership, the museum began the Weltkulturen Labor program, which grants residencies to artists and researchers.