Ecologies of Institutional Collecting: Private Donors, Public Collections, Curatorial Challenges and Visitor Response. Ai Weiwei's Teahouse in Berlin's Museum of Asian Art

One of the most prominent acquisitions by Berlin's Museum of Asian Art in recent years is contemporary Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's Teahouse (2009). The presentation of the contemporary artwork next to historical pieces aims to "shed new light" on the museum's collection, "provoking a wide range of associations," according to the museum's website. While the information in the gallery explores cultural-historical relations between contemporary and historical pieces, a journal article by the museum's director comments on the acquisition history of the newly-acquired piece. The Teahouse was given to the museum as a permanent loan by private collectors, Si and Dieter Rosenkranz, who offered the director a choice between two artworks by Ai Weiwei, commissioned by Berlin- and Beijing-based Alexander Ochs Galleries. In his article, the museum's director reflects on the relationship between the museum and the collectors, his own selection criteria, and the difficult decision-making process. This paper takes the acquisition of Ai Weiwei's Teahouse as a case study to shed light on the multilayered practice of institutional collecting. By exploring the circumstances of the acquisition, the roles of various stakeholders involved in the acquisition, the director's selection criteria, the curatorial, conceptual challenges to integrate the loaned artwork into the permanent exhibition and the multifaceted response by visitors, I seek to identify blind spots in the museum's presentation of their collection and discuss the potentially conflicting implications of such a collecting practice for the institutional and public processes of (re-)interpreting and "making sense" of collections.