Interview with Gregor Isenbort

What inspired you to pursue a career in the museum sector, and what were some of the key steps in your journey to becoming the director of the DASA Museum?

As a student, I never thought about working in a museum later on. By chance, I was offered a job at the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn by a professor at the university and that was it for me.
What fascinated me at the beginning and what makes the job so enjoyable to this day is the mixture of intellectual-conceptual work, strategic orientation and the operational part of a museum. The operational dimension of a museum with all its facets, from exhibition construction to clean toilets and friendly service, has the same important place as the clever conception of an exhibition.
As I have worked in museums that have focused a large part of their work on education and communication, I have become very focused on this area over time. I wanted to get people interested in topics that they had never dealt with before. And to do this without lecturing them like in school, but to give them a good time in the process.
The most important steps were my first job at the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn, then still under Hermann Schäfer, where I was directly familiarized with highly professional and stringent museum work that was tailored to the visitors. Secondly, later at the Museum of Communication in Berlin, where I was able to manage a large number of employees for the first time and where I learnt to implement ideas and strategies for successful museum work myself.

What are some of the biggest challenges you have faced in your role as a director, and what achievements are you most proud of during your tenure at the DASA Museum?¹

This question is really difficult to answer, it means prioritising different important things. The biggest challenges are often the ones you shouldn’t talk about in interviews, so I’m not going to do that. But one of them was certainly to convince stakeholders and employees to see the permanent exhibition not as eternal, but as an area of the museum that is also changing and needs to change. We change parts of our permanent exhibition every year, even though we also show classic temporary exhibitions. This requires a lot of work, a clever concept and always the will to change.
What am I proud of? That it works, that the change in the process has worked, that we have more visitors every year, even though we never have a grand opening, but only partial openings. Another thing I am very proud of is the establishment of good scientific visitor research at DASA and the founding of a German Visitor Studies Association. If you want to communicate with the public, you must listen to their voice.

What are your future plans or visions for the DASA Museum, and how do you see it evolving to meet the needs of future visitors and the wider community?

In future, we want to try to change ourselves with new exhibition formats, some of which have nothing to do with traditional exhibitions, and to test the extent to which we can appeal to younger generations with such formats. In the exhibitions, we are placing more emphasis on dialogue with visitors, on interaction between visitors and on communication as a whole. In other words, we are leaving the familiar museum space and increasingly seeing ourselves as a place of social interaction. And I’m proud of that too: of our courage to do that. And, above all, thanks to our stakeholders for allowing us to do this.

What is the purpose of giving the DASA Award ? Why is it important?

The DASA Award is not given by us, but by the EMA jury. But it is of course a great honour for us that this award is named after us. In my opinion, the award is very important because it strengthens education in the museum and museum visitors have also found their place in the European awards. Even if many colleagues don’t like to hear that: Museums are not universities and not books! Educating visitors must be a fundamental part of our work. And anyone who can demonstrate special achievements in this area can apply for this award.

Do you have any advise for museums to be more visible and active relation to their societies?

Don’t think too much or follow others! Listen to the people around you!