Holger Liebs worked as an editor at the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” before becoming editor-in-chief of “Monopol”. He then worked as Publishing Director at Hatje Cantz and from 2020 to 2025 as Director of Media and Communication at the Dresden State Art Collections. He has been Creative Director for SPK since August 2025.
Photo: SPK / Killisch
How long have you been with the SPK and what are your tasks?
I've been working as Creative Director for the SPK since the beginning of August, which means that I develop concepts and strategies for the SPK's brand identity for the President and together with colleagues from the the museums, archives, libraries and research institutions. I'm looking forward to this task because it means an intensive exchange - intellectual interaction with the people and the diverse content of the SPK and its institutions.
What is your favourite place in the SPK?
I deliberately choose a fleeting, temporary location, as it is essentially a spiritual one: I like to be enveloped by Fujiko Nakaya's water mist in the sculpture garden of the Neue Nationalgalerie. When you stand in this ephemeral cloud, your thoughts take flight and suddenly anything is possible; it feels a bit like being in the dry ice fog of a house rave at the turn of the century.
The forms dissolve and Mies van der Rohe's basement courtyard is transformed into a Musée Imaginaire in which you fly through the millennia. In the mist, Francesco Laurana's Neapolitan princess from the Bode Museum, Thomas Theodor Heine's grumpy devil from the Alte Nationalgalerie, one of my favourite pieces at the SPK, or "Old Fritz" from the Gipsformerei appear in the mind's eye alongside the sculptures on site.
And when the veil lifts, these dream images overlap with the artworks in situ, memory, dream and vision converge and you realise: you are in the museum, the best place in the world.
Fujiko Nakaya's fog sculpture in the sculpture garden of the Neue Nationalgalerie can be seen until 14 September 2025. The sculpture starts on the hour between 11am and 5pm. Thursday until 7 pm.
The exhibition is sponsored by the Kuratorium Preußischer Kulturbesitz.
Fancy becoming part of the SPK cosmos? You can find all vacancies throughout the foundation on LinkedIn.
