Henriette Gallus appointed Director of Public Strategies at Ullstein Buchverlage, leaves HKW by 30.9.
6.6.2025
After years of intensive collaboration, Henriette Gallus will leave Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) on 30 September 2025 to assume the role of Director of Public Strategies at Ullstein Buchverlage (Bonnier Media) starting 1 October.
In her role as Deputy Director, Henriette Gallus already supported the preparatory period of Prof. Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, who was appointed Artistic Director in 2021. Together with him, she played a key role in shaping the strategic realignment of HKW and its reopening in 2023. Since then, Gallus has been responsible for the communications and publishing agendas of HKW and has conceptually led the multi-year, nationwide project heimaten, which was developed in collaboration with Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Max Czollek, and Ibou Diop.
The HKW team sincerely thanks Henriette Gallus for her passionate commitment and her intelligent, bold, and forward-looking work over the past years. We warmly congratulate her on her appointment and are very pleased that she will remain a close advisor to Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung.
Henriette Gallus will take up her new position on 1 October 2025. Until then, she will continue in her role as Deputy Director of the house as before.
“Henriette Gallus as a friend and colleague, with whom I have worked for over 12 years, has been a fundamental part of the reimagination of a Haus der Kulturen der Welt worth its name ever since I was appointed. She has been crucial in implementing our practice of ‘leadership with affection’, synchronizing conceptual and operational ambitions, dreaming up communication strategies and putting in place strategies for a house with the mandate to present the cultures of the world in a time of extreme sociopolitical precarity across the globe. While her absence in the day-to-day operations at HKW will be felt, we congratulate her on her appointment as Director of Public Strategies at the Ullstein Buchverlage. We trust she will carry the HKW spirit of the last years with her into her new position and that she will stay close to us and our programme in the coming years.”
(Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Director and Chief Curator)
“I am very proud of the work we have done together over the past years. We achieved programmatic and strategic milestones that were unique in many respects—and are particularly important in a time when much of what we took for granted is being called into question. A special joy for me has been and continues to be the collaboration with people whose perspectives and ideas have deeply enriched me and my work. I am very grateful for that. I already look forward to everything that Bonaventure Ndikung and the HKW team will realize in the coming years and remain connected to the house in friendship.”
(Henriette Gallus, Deputy Director)
Henriette Gallus is a communication and cultural strategist as well as an editor. After working as an editor and literary agent from 2005 onwards, in 2011 she became the press officer of dOCUMENTA (13) (2012), and from 2014 head of communications of the 14th edition of documenta in both Kassel and Athens (2017). From 2018 to 2022 she was deputy director of steirischer herbst festival for contemporary art in Graz, until she became deputy director of Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin, in 2022. She joined the conceptual team of the 36th São Paulo Biennale as strategy and communication advisor in 2024. She has advised numerous cultural institutions worldwide, among them: sonsbeek 20–>24, Arnhem; Rencontres de Bamako, Mali, 2018 and 2022; the German Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, 2019; Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, 2021, and Castello di Rivoli – Museo d’Arte Contemporeana, Turin from 2017 to 2023.
Contact
Jan Trautmann
Pressesprecher
Lead Communications Officer
Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW)
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10 10557
Berlin
T: + 49 (0) 30 397 87 157