“Privatizations” or Public-Private Partnerships? Institutional Concepts of Art Collecting in the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen

Due to the fragmentation of the German Confederation, from which the German Empire emerged in 1871, independent bourgeois collections arose alongside the art museums in the residences of the monarchical states. These were organized and financed by bourgeois art associations and foundations, initially without the financial participation of the cities and city-states.

On 14 November 1823, the Bremen senator Hieronymus Klugkist invited thirty-four art-lovers to launch the Kunstverein as one of the first art associations in Germany. It was an important concern of the association to prevent the dissipation by sale of existing private collections of significance to the city state. In 1849, the Kunsthalle Bremen was built, the first building in Germany ever to be owned by an art association.

Approximately 140 years later, the foundation "Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen" was established by resolution of the citizenship of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen City Community. This museum of contemporary art was a novelty in Europe: it was founded without a single object in its collection. Instead, the concept of a collector's museum was implemented, in which the permanent exhibition was equipped exclusively with exhibits from private lenders in Germany and abroad.

Are the Kunsthalle Bremen and the newly founded Museum of Modern Art collective private collections or public-private partnerships? The lecture will focus on the similarities and differences between the concepts behind collecting and their respective processes – the acquisition, installation, and deaccession policies – of these two art institutions in the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen.