A New Chapter for Pforzheim’s Jewellery Museum: Director Cornelie Holzach Retires in April

Cornelie Holzach, the long-time director of the Pforzheim Jewellery Museum and Technical Museum, will retire in April. Mayor Tobias Volle thanks the jewellery expert for her great commitment, with which she has continuously developed the two museums, presented exhibitions of international standing and carried Pforzheim's reputation out into the world. Cornelie Holzach says goodbye with an extremely young and experimental exhibition theme, the Stories of HipHop, as the finale to a very varied museum career. I look back on a rich and fulfilling time, says Holzach. But it is with great pleasure that I place the responsibility in the hands of my competent successor Friederike Zobel and I look forward to being able to follow the fortunes of both museums from the outside in the future.


Redesign of the Jewellery Museum and Technical Museum
Cornelie Holzach joined the Jewellery Museum in 1997 and worked with the previous director Fritz Falk for many years before taking over as director in 2005 after a year as acting director. It was during her time that the Jewellery Museum reopened in 2006 after extensive expansion and redesign by the architects HG Merz and the graphic design studio L2M3. Thanks to her work on the Reuchlinhaus in the so-called fifth construction phase, she knows the building inside out. In 2007, Holzach also took over the management of the Technical Museum of Pforzheim’s Jewellery and Watchmaking Industries and brought the two buildings together. It was important to me that the two museums, which are linked by their themes, also have a harmonised CI, explains Holzach. In 2017, The Technical was also reopened after a comprehensive redesign as part of Pforzheim’s 250th anniversary as the City of Gold. This was followed in 2021 by the redesign of the Eva and Peter Herion ethnographic collection in the Jewellery Museum, together with the team and external experts. 

After training as a goldsmith, Cornelie Holzach studied jewellery design under Professors Hermann Stark and Rüdiger Lorenzen at the Fachhochschule für Gestaltung Pforzheim, now Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences, where she also worked as a research assistant. She came to the Jewellery Museum in 1997 to draw up a concept for Ornamenta II. The debate at the time did not allow for an immediate continuation. When a new date was set for the previous year, the museum expert accompanied this Ornamenta 2024 with two exhibitions under the motto All Cleared Out - The Jewellery Museum Extends an Invitation and Hand-selected – by Sam Tho Duong and the participatory format The Votes Are Being Cast – Visitors‘ Choices.


Internationally renowned exhibitions, expansion of the collection 
During her almost 30 years at the Jewellery Museum, Cornelie Holzach has curated or brought into the museum many exhibitions with a wide range of themes, whether historical, contemporary, ethnographic or historical and interdisciplinary. Art is flowering in 2007, Splendour of Power - The Habsburgs' Imperial Treasures from Vienna's Kunstkammer Collection in cooperation with the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, East Meets West - Jewelled Splendours of the Art Deco Era. The Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan Collection and last year's Gabi Dziuba & Friends are just some of the highlights. A large number of publications and increasingly digital formats are the lasting legacy of these projects.

Since 1997, the jewellery expert has continuously expanded the permanent collection, from historical to contemporary jewellery. In doing so, she has built on the areas of the collection created by Fritz Falk and continued to develop contacts all over the world, whether within Europe or as far afield as Taiwan, Japan and the USA. She has repeatedly been asked to serve on juries, including for the Herbert Hofmann Prize at the International Craft Fair in Munich in 2018. Since 2022, she has been an expert on jewellery for the television programme Kunst + Krempel.

The variety of topics that have come together during my time in Pforzheim is enormous. I would like to thank the city, the numerous cooperation partners and my team for their active support over the years and look forward to remaining connected to jewellery, albeit from a different perspective, says Cornelie Holzach looking back. The Stories of HipHop show that it has always been important to her not to insist on the old, but to embrace the new.



Publications (Selection):
- Cornelie Holzach (Ed.) Gabi Dziuba & Friends. Mit Beiträgen von Vera Gliem, Christian Nagel, Stephan Strsembski sowie einem Interview zwischen Gabi Dziuba und Christian Malycha. Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart 2024.
- Ellen Maurer Zilioli & Cornelie Holzach (Eds.). Auf Abwegen – zeitgenössische Gold- und Silberschmiedekunst am Rande der Vernunft: Gefäß – Schmuck – Gerät | Gone Astray – the Art of Gold- and Silversmithing on the Edge of Reason: Vessel – Jewellery – Hollowware. Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart 2023. 
- Matthias Dall’Asta und Cornelie Holzach (Eds.) Die Mysterien der Zeichen. Johannes Reuchlin, Schmuck, Schrift und Sprache. Mit Beiträgen von Jonathan Boyd, Beatriz Chadour-Sampson, Matthias Dall’Asta, Cornelie Holzach, Wolfgang Mayer, Susanne Nagel, Katja Poljanac, Stefan Rhein, Nathan Ron, Isabel Schmidt-Mappes, Pierre Vesperini und Anja Wolkenhauer. Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart 2022. 
- Cornelie Holzach (Ed.). Max Ernst – Sammlung Würth. Im Dialog mit Werken aus dem Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim 2020. 
- Martina Eberspächer, Cornelie Holzach. Die Welt neu geordnet – Schätze aus der Zeit Napoleons | A Newly Ordered World – Treasures from the Napoleonic Era | Un nouvel ordonnancement du monde – Trésors de l’époque napoléonienne. Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim 2020. 
- Martina Eberspächer, Cornelie Holzach. Offene Horizonte – Schätze zu Humboldts Reisewegen | Unconfined Horizons – Treasures Retracing Humboldt’s Travel Routes. Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim 2020.
- Cornelie Holzach, Katja Poljanac. Schatzsuche mit Schmucki der Perlsau für Groß und Klein im Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim. Arnoldsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart, 2011.
- Cornelie Holzach u.a. Georg Dobler. Schmuck/Jewellery. 1980–2010. Arnoldsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 2010. 
- Paulus Rainer. Glanz der Macht. Kaiserliche Pretiosen aus der Wiener Kunstkammer. Ed. Sabine Haag, Cornelie Holzach und Katja Schneider Mit Beiträgen von Rudolf Distelberger und Thomas Kuster. Folio Verlag, Wien 2010
- Vivienne Becker. Henkel & Grosse. 100 Jahre Leidenschaft für Grossé + Bijoux Christian Dior«/. Henkel & Grosse. 100 Years of Passion for Grossé + Bijoux Christian Dior. Mit Beiträgen von Michael Grosse, Cornelie Holzach, Adelheid Rasche. Arnoldsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 2010
- Art Déco. Schmuck und Accessoires. Ein neuer Stil für eine neue Welt/. Art Déco. Jewellery and Accessories. A New Style for a New World. Ed. Cornelie Holzach Mit Beiträgen von Adelheid Rasche, Christianne Weber-Stöber. Arnoldsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 2008. 
- Ursula Ilse-Neuman, Cornelie Holzach, Jutta-Annette Page. GlassWear. Glas im zeitgenössischen Schmuck/. GlassWear. Glass in Contemporary Jewelry. Eine Kooperation von Museum of Arts & Design, New York und Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim. Arnoldsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 2007. 
- Kunst treibt Blüten/Art is flowering. Ed. Cornelie Holzach, Tilmann Schempp. Mit Beiträgen von Matthias Bumiller, Elisabeth Heine, Jean-Baptiste Joly, Beate Rygiert, Bettina Schönfelder u.a. Arnoldsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 2007. 
- Cornelie Holzach, Tilmann Schempp. Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim. Museumsführer/Museum Guide. Auf der Grundlage der Texte von Fritz Falk. Mit einem Beitrag von Christoph Timm. Arnoldsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 2006.
- Fritz Falk, Cornelie Holzach. Schmuck der Moderne 1960-1998. Bestandskatalog der modernen Sammlung des Schmuckmuseums Pforzheim/Modern Jewellery 1960-1998. Catalogue of the Modern Collection in the Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim. Arnoldsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1999.