Friedrich Christian Flick Collection

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The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection is a collection of contemporary art by Friedrich Christian Flick .

It comprises around 2500 works by 150 artists and has been on view in parts in Berlin since 2004 in the Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart . The exhibition is controversial because the money from which the works of art were bought were also generated by forced laborers in armaments factories during the National Socialist era .

Emergence

Flick began collecting art in 1975. He started out with old masters, but turned to contemporary art in the early 1980s. He made acquaintances and friendships with artists such as Paul McCarthy , Jason Rhoades , David Weiss and Peter Fischli , Roman Signer , Franz West , Thomas Schütte u. a. From the end of the 1990s he was advised by the gallery owner Ivan Wirth, a partner of the Hauser & Wirth gallery . Many of the artists in the collection are represented either by Wirth or by David Zwirner, who ran the New York gallery Zwirner & Wirth with Wirth until 2009.

In the spring of 2001, Flick wanted to get his art out of the depot and was considering building a museum for the collection in Zurich. He had to give this up after a heated controversy because of his grandfather Friedrich Flick's Nazi past .

In January 2003, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation , the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and Friedrich Christian Flick signed an agreement to show parts of the collection in Berlin. Flick took over the costs of 7.5 million euros for the expansion of the Rieck-Halle in the direct vicinity of the Hamburger Bahnhof, the foundation committed to bear the running costs. This contract was extended for a further 10 years in 2011. In February 2008, Flick donated 166 works of contemporary art (parts of his collection; including works by Nam June Paik , John Cage , Dan Graham , Isa Genzken , Stan Douglas, Andreas Hofer , Bruce Nauman and Candida Höfer ) to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation as sponsor of Hamburger Bahnhof . A second donation to the foundation followed in January 2015, this time with 104 works by u. a. Cindy Sherman , Katharina Fritsch , Thomas Schütte , Paul McCarthy and Marcel Broodthaers .

As in Zurich, Flick's agreement with the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the Berlin State Museums also attracted great criticism and the like. a. from artists and cultural workers. Flick was mainly accused of owing his fortune to the business of his grandfather Friedrich Flick, who, as an armaments supplier in the Third Reich, exploited around 40,000 prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates, but that he - the grandson - never paid into the forced labor fund. Showing his art collection to the public in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin was seen as an attempt to rid the collection of its association with Nazi crimes - which Salomon Korn , for example, the Vice President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany , described as an "ideal increase in value".

In April 2020 it became known that the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and Contemporary Art Limited had agreed to let the loan agreement concluded in 2003 expire on September 30, 2021. The reason is the planned demolition of the Rieck halls next to the Hamburger Bahnhof, in which works from the collection were shown.

literature

  • Peter Kessen: On the art of inheriting. The "Flick Collection" and the Berlin Republic. Philo Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 9783865725219 .
  • Thomas Ramge: The Flicks. A German family story about money, power and politics , Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 2004, ISBN 3-593-37404-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barbara Weidle: Flick Collection Opens in Berlin. In: artnet.com. 2014, accessed March 12, 2017 .
  2. ^ Friedrich Christian Flick Collection: Why Berlin? Retrieved March 12, 2017 .
  3. ^ Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation: Friedrich Christian Flick Collection in Hamburger Bahnhof extended until 2021. Press release from May 16, 2011. May 16, 2011, accessed March 12, 2017 .
  4. ^ Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart - Berlin: Friedrich Christian Flick donated 104 works of contemporary art to the National Gallery of the State Museums in Berlin. January 28, 2015, accessed March 12, 2017 .
  5. ^ Hanno Rauterberg: Art with a secondary purpose. In: The time. April 7, 2004, accessed March 12, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Holger Liebs: Shackles of family ties. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. May 19, 2010. Retrieved March 12, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Steffen Haug: Review of: The press controversy about the Flick Collection. In: ART-HIST. December 14, 2004, accessed March 12, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Berlin museums lose important private collections. In: www.faz.net. April 24, 2020, accessed April 24, 2020 .