Energy, enthusiasm and the art of collecting
Aspects of Art Patronage
MúzeumCafé 17.
The Essl Museum in Klosterneuburg, a town at the northern edge of the Vienna Woods, celebrated its 10th birthday last year. Characteristically for the collectors Agnes and Karlheinz Essl, and their colleagues whom they themselves recruited, the anniversary was marked by looking ahead, rather than contemplating the past. Included in the programme was Aspects of Collecting, an exhibition (which ran until 28 February 2010) presenting ten modern and contemporary collections and the process of how they are created and developed. Works of art purchased at the exhibition will be deposited with a variety of museums for a period of ten years. The invited museums were the Arken Museum for Moderne Kunst (Ishoj, Denmark), the India Habitat Centre (New Delhi), the Luisiana Moseum for Moderne Kunst (Humlebaek, Denmark), the Mart Museo de Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto (Italy), the MdM Museum der Moderne (Salzburg), the MOT Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo), the Muzeum Sztuki w Lodzi (Poland), the Muzej suvremene umjetnosti (Zagreb), the Städel Museum (Frankfurt am Main) and the Tate Liverpool. The Essl Museum itself also participated. The project is significant as it took place during the world economic crisis when decreasing state support demands the inclusion of new resources and the rethinking of museum development concepts. In the past decade the Essl Museum has become one of central Europe’s most important focuses of modern and contemporary art collection, as well as a strong link in the chain of art patronage. Its exhibitions have an international appeal, as exemplified by a recent show presenting contemporary art from India and the Essl Award, which was established to support young artists in eastern and central Europe. As the same time, with its consistent collecting and publishing activities the museum is also involved with the promotion of contemporary Austrian art. The Essls themselves began collecting art decades ago when Agnes bought the first work of art for her husband. It depicted the Turkish occupation of Klosterneuburg in 1683. Then came works by Friedensreich Hundertwasser, and from 1975 paintings by the fantastic realists – Hausner, Brauer and Fuchs – who began in the 1940s, Brus and Schwarzkogler the Vienna actionists of the 1960s, Hermann Nitsch who extended the borders of art into the world of mystery plays, and many others. Among the museums involved with Aspects of Collecting the Städel Museum is the oldest. It was founded in 1815 when Johann Friedrich Städel, a Frankfurt merchant and banker, donated his wealth and art collection for the establishment of the Städelsche Kunstinstitut. The museum’s enormous collection of 2,777 paintings, 600 statues and a hundred thousand works of graphic art spans seven centuries of European art from Dürer to Bacon, from Rembrandt to Richter. The recently restored museum building opened with a huge Botticelli exhibition a few months ago. The roots of Tate Liverpool can also be found in the 19th century. The foundation stone of the London Tate Gallery was laid in 1897. Its benefactor, Henry Tate, was born in Liverpool and made his fortune there as a merchant. Tate Liverpool was the first of the four Tate Galleries outside London and opened in one of the Albert Dock’s old warehouses, converted to the design of James Stirling, in 1998. The Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz began in 1930 as a significant European centre of international avant-garde on the initiative of a group of Polish Constructivist artists. Two museums from Denmark were also invited to the exhibition. Perhaps the most well-known of the participating institutions was the Luisiana Museum of Modern Art which is popular due to its spectacular location and its permanent collection representing post-1945 art movements and comprising some three thousand works. The least known Danish collection, that of the Arken Museum of Modern Art, can be found to the south of Copenhagen.