This post was originally published on artnews.com
Berlin’s government has pushed through a €130 million cut—12% of its culture budget—despite weeks of protests and warnings from the arts sector. The reduction, part of the city’s 2025 spending plan, has prompted widespread concerns over closures and threats to Berlin’s status as a major cultural hub.
The budget cut is a departure from Berlin’s previous plan to inject the city’s cultural spaces with new capital. In 2021, Germany approved a record €2.1 billion federal culture; a €155 million increase from 2020.
Protests by artist advocacy groups and backlash from museum leaders over the last month did little to stall the government’s changes, despite call for officials to meet with cultural experts to explore the ramifications of the cuts.
According to The Art Newspaper (TAN), Emma Enderby, director of the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, confirmed that the museum is already being affected by the plan, opting not to renew staff contracts and choosing to scale back scheduled programs, including public engagement initiatives, as the budget details for the museum in 2025 remain unclear until January. “It’s very short-sighted,” Enderby told TAN.
Mayor Kai Wegner, a member of the Christian Democratic Union, has defended the cuts as essential for maintaining financial sustainability for the German city after a difficult year saw revenues decrease.
Wegner claims the cuts will help to secure Berlin’s future, attributing the fiscal tightening to the prior left-wing administration for climate-related initiatives he claims strained the city’s finances. “We need a change of mentality, including in culture,” Wegner said.
Paul Spies, co-president of the Berlin Museums Association, who spoke to TAN, warned that abrupt reductions may force some institutions to cancel work contracts before their agreed upon terms, arguing that many organizations don’t have reserve budgets to fall back on.
German museums without private funding face particularly steep challenges, with fixed costs around operating collections consuming around 80 percent of budgets in many cases, leaving many exhibitions and auxiliary programs vulnerable to cancellation.
Some experts have pointed out that public museums in Germany aren’t legally able to rely on private philanthropy the way peer organizations in the U.S. and other parts of Europe do, making their futures,compared to international creative hubs less certain.