The Foundation aims to keep Sigmar Polke's work alive and to support scholars and academics. To achieve this, we grant annual scholarships and make our archive available for academic research projects. Furthermore, we carry out our own projects, including exhibitions, publications, talks, and an oral art history project.
Foundation
The Anna Polke Foundation is a non-profit foundation based in Cologne. Founded in 2018 by Anna Polke, its main task is to encourage people to engage with the work of her father, the artist Sigmar Polke. Sigmar Polke (1941–2010) is still one of the most influential contemporary artists today.
“Presumably You Have a Hole in Your Head You Want to Fill with Art?”
Sigmar Polke, quoted after ”Kunstnachrichten. Zeitschrift für internationale Kunst”, 1976
Team
NICOLE RUPPERT
Managing Director and Head of Administration
Nicole Ruppert studied German language and literature as well as history at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her career path led from the Cultural Office of the City of Wolfsburg, to the Empore theater in Buchholz in der Nordheide, and then to a role as the commercial manager of the Estate of Sigmar Polke. In her many years as a cultural manager, she has conceived and carried out countless events.
SOPHIA STANG
Managing Director and Head of Research
Sophia Stang studied art history and German philology, as well as culture, communications, and management in Münster and Berlin. Her career has included positions at the Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, the Estate of Sigmar Polke in Cologne, and as a research assistant in the Department of Art History at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena under Prof. Dr. Verena Krieger as part of a research project sponsored by the German Research Association, DFG. She is currently completing her doctorate, also in Jena, on Giorgio de Chirico’s art-theoretical and autobiographical writings in the context of the magazine Valori Plastici.
DR. KATHRIN BARUTZKI
Project Manager
Kathrin Barutzki studied art history, German language and literature, and modern history in Cologne, Bonn, and Rome. After finishing her studies in 2011, she worked for the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen, the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, the Estate of Sigmar Polke, as a freelance author and curator, and as a lecturer at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. She completed her doctorate at the Universität zu Köln on the subject of photographic strategies and multiple exhibition concepts in art around 1970.
NELLY GAWELLEK
Project Manager
Nelly Gawellek studied art history and general rhetoric in Tübingen. After finishing her studies in 2011, she worked as a gallery director in Cologne and Berlin and as a research associate for the Estate of Sigmar Polke in Cologne, among other roles. She is also a freelance author and curator focussing on current artistic positions as well as a board member of And She Was Like: BÄM! e.V, a feminist network for arts and culture.
ASTRID HEIBACH
Freelancer, Video Archive
Astrid Heibach is a Cologne-based artist working across photography, collage, film, and video. She studied theatre and film at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, computer graphics and animation at the School of Visual Arts, New York. Alongside her artistic practice, she has worked as a film-and video editor and lecturer. From 2012 to 2017, she oversaw the digitisation, cataloguing, and presentation of Sigmar Polke’s cinematic oeuvre. Since 2019 she has been supporting the video projects of the Anna Polke Foundation.
ROSA RÄDERSCHEIDT
Research Assistant
Rosa Räderscheidt studied art history and theatre studies in Berlin and Cologne. She has worked at the Berliner Ensemble, the Bassenge auction house, and in various galleries. In addition to her work at the Anna Polke Foundation, she manages the estate of the artist Marta Hegemann.
DR. SILKE RÖCKELEIN
Research Associate
Silke Röckelein studied art history and modern German literature and media studies in Marburg and Poitiers and completed her doctorate at the University of Frankfurt am Main. She has worked for the Digital Art and Culture Archive, Düsseldorf, and the German Digital Library, among others. She works also as a research assistant in the Collections and Archives department of the Insel Hombroich Foundation, Neuss, since 2013.
ELSA WELLMANN-GILCHER
Research Associate, Sigmar Polke: Athanor NOW
Elsa Wellmann-Gilcher studied art history, art—media—cultural education, classical archaeology, and museology in Frankfurt am Main, Rome, and Bonn. She gained practical experience at research institutions such as the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence and the Kunst- und Museumsbibliothek Köln, as well as at exhibition venues such as the Städel Museum, the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung in Frankfurt am Main, and the Bonner Kunstverein.
Founder
ANNA POLKE
Born in 1964, Anna Polke is the second child of Karin and Sigmar Polke. She studied acting at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Hamburg. After working at the Staatstheater Darmstadt and the Hamburger Schauspielhaus, she has performed at the Theater Oberhausen since 1992, where she received the audience prize twice and was awarded the Jury First Prize in 2018 for her role in Das dritte Leben des Fritz Giga. She is also a photographer and filmmaker and has shown her work in various exhibitions.
Board of Trustees
DR. JACQUELINE BURCKHARDT
Jacqueline Burckhardt is an art historian and curator. Before studying art history in Zurich, where she completed her doctorate, she received training as a conservator at Istituto Centrale del Restauro in Rome. She was the cofounder and editor of the magazine Parkett (Zurich/New York), published between 1984 and 2017. Jacqueline Burckhardt taught at the Accademia di Architettura – Università della Svizzera italiana and from 2008 to 2016 was the director of the Sommerakademie im Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern. From 2006 to 2009 she curated Sigmar Polke’s stained-glass -window project in Grossmünster Zürich as well as site-specific art at Novartis Campus in Basel from 2006 to 2015.
BICE CURIGER
Bice Curiger is an art historian and curator. She has been the artistic director of the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles since 2013. She was cofounder and editor-in-chief of Parkett, a book series on contemporary art that was published from 1984 to 2017 in English and German in Zurich and New York. From 1993 to 2013 she was a curator at Kunsthaus Zürich as well as the director of the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011. She has published numerous books, catalogues and essays on contemporary art. The first of many essays she wrote on Sigmar Polke was published in 1977, and she subsequently organized a number of exhibitions that were devoted to his work or included works by the artist in a thematic context.
CAROLA DE DECKER
Carola de Decker is a lawyer. Art has been a special focus of her work for quite some time. As a member of the Board of Trustees, she advises the Anna Polke Foundation on legal matters.
PROF. DR. PETRA LANGE-BERNDT
Petra Lange-Berndt has been chair of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Art History Department at the University of Hamburg, since 2015. She previously taught as a lecturer/reader in the History of Art Department at University College London from 2007 to 2015. She is the author of numerous publications on art theory and modern and contemporary art; her research focuses in particular on materiality, gender studies, interactions between art and natural sciences, animal studies, and countercultures. Some of the various projects that she has (co-)curated, some have been devoted to Sigmar Polke’s work, including the influential exhibition Sigmar Polke: We Petty Bourgeois! Comrades and Contemporaries; The 1970s, which was shown in three consecutive parts at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in 2009–2010.
All photos: Nadine Schwickart