Dr. Alina Gromova has been named the new director of the Jewish Museum in Munich. According to an announcement by the city, she will take up her position on September 1.
She replaces founding director Bernhard Purin, who passed away unexpectedly last year.
The announcement states that Since 2022, Gromova has been deputy director of the New Synagogue Foundation Berlin – Centrum Judaicum, where she heads the departments of exhibitions, collection and digitisation. Between 2016 and 2021 Gromova worked as a research assistant at the Jewish Museum Berlin.
She was born in 1980 in Ukraine, and has lived in Israel, Germany and Australia, where she worked at exhibitions at the Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre in Melbourne, among other places. As Vice-President of the International Museum Council (ICOM) Germany, she is involved in international museum work.
“The Jewish Museum Munich is an important place for the history of the city from a Jewish perspective,” Marek Wiechers, Head of Munich’s Culture Department, stated. “I am sure that [Gromova] will be able to use her experience, especially at the New Synagogue Berlin – Centrum Judaicum and her expertise in commemorative work, as well as in the international museum work, profitably in her future activities. I wish her all the best for the tasks.”
“As a city ethnologist and museum manager, I combine a passion for urban society, cultural and memory work,” Gromova said in the announcement. “Together with the team of the Jewish Museum Munich, I would like to bring the relevant topics of Jewish history and present into Munich’s diverse urban society. I am particularly looking forward to working with other cultural and scientific institutions, schools, artists and civil society in the city.”