Art collections of the public broadcasters

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Kirchner's mountain landscape (still WDR collection)

The art collections of the public broadcasting corporations denote the individual collections of public broadcasting corporations that have arisen since the ARD network was founded in 1950.

background

In the 1950s and 1960s, public broadcasters often saw themselves as “cultural carriers in the broadest sense”; In the case of ZDF , there was also patronage when artistic director Dieter Stolte was of the opinion that a public broadcaster “shouldn't promote culture on television alone.” In the case of WDR, the works came predominantly from artists who are only known in Germany and have their collectors here, such as Bernard Schultze , Walter Dexel or Horst Janssen . For “comparatively small sums”, pictures and sculptures were bought in galleries, at art auctions , from catalogs and directly from artists. For example, Kirchner's “Berglandschaft mit Alphütten” from 1921 was acquired by the transmitter in 1956 for 8,000 DM; "As early as 1997 the painting was estimated by an expert at 800,000 marks."

“Art officers were responsible for the broadcasters, and there was even an art committee at WDR . It was part of the prestige to decorate your office as contemporary as possible. ”Expenditures for works of art were also partly realized by the fact that specifications for art in buildings could “ be interpreted very freely ”, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung 2015. The increased public awareness of the collections came about through the suggestion of the WDR director Tom Buhrow to part with the station's own library and parts of the art collection, including works by Max Beckmann , Karl Hofer , Ernst-Ludwig Kirchner , Oskar Kokoschka and Emil Nolde , which the resistance of the NRW -State government has triggered; North Rhine-Westphalia's minister of culture, Ute Schäfer, wanted to prevent fifty pictures from being auctioned at Sotheby’s in the spring of 2016 by declaring them a "nationally valuable cultural asset". However, the sale was carried out with the approval of the NRW state government. After the auction, speculators sold some of these works of art for a profit.

Amount of current holdings

Holdings according to station information (as of September 2015)

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ a b c d e Viola Schenz. What does art do? . Süddeutsche Zeitung of September 11, 2015, p. 37
  2. ↑ a b c Rose-Maria Gropp: Sale at the WDR art collection to be auctioned in faz.net (2015)
  3. ^ Art: Image Disturbance , Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 6, 2016
  4. ↑ NRW Ministry of Culture: WDR may sell 48 works of art , rp-online.de , April 6, 2016
  5. ^ WDR art collection: The cultural identity is lost , Handelsblatt , May 27, 2016
  6. ↑ First, second and dumbest , Focus 51/2016, pp. 42/43, December 17, 2016