Hamburg's stunning new space to showcase outsiders
Published: October 17, 2008

HAMBURG: Cultural pundits regularly note that Germany has the densest museum landscape in the world, with annual attendance exceeding that for soccer matches. Nonetheless, the new century is witnessing an unprecedented trend toward the establishment of private museums or public-private ventures like the Weishaupt Kunsthalle in Ulm or the Frieder Burda Museum in Baden-Baden.

Last year the nation's first museum for video and photography was opened by a private collector, Julia Stoschek, in Düsseldorf. In a gigantic bunker at the center of Berlin, the advertising guru Christian Boros has recently made his cutting-edge collection of contemporary art available by appointment to small groups of aficionados. In Wuppertal, the British artist Tony Cragg has coaxed a derelict estate back to life, creating a public sculpture park along with indoor exhibition spaces.

By far the most ambitious of the newcomers is the Falckenberg collection, which recently moved into expanded quarters and is now known as the Phoenix Kulturstiftung, or Phoenix Cultural Foundation. It is testimony to the obsessive passion of the 65-year-old lawyer and businessman Harald Falckenberg, who in little more than a decade has assembled nearly 2,000 contemporary works. With 6,225 square meters, or 67,000 square feet, of exhibition space and open storage, this constitutes the largest private museum in Germany.

The stunning ensemble, spreading over five floors, is situated in the former Phoenix Tire Factory in Hamburg-Harburg, only a few minutes from the center of the city. The converted interior, finely orchestrated by the Berlin architect Roger Bundschuh, juxtaposes open areas with intimate, cabinet-like spaces and those, in turn, with expansive but self-contained galleries that house sprawling installations - by the likes of John Bock, Mike Kelley and Jon Kessler - that are one of the specialties of the collection.

Falckenberg thus enjoys a freedom denied to most directors of public collections. For them, housing a complex multimedia installation like Kessler's "The Palace at 4 A.M." often demands budgetary and spatial compromise - perhaps even a curtailment of temporary shows. In his new quarters, Falckenberg has provided a self-contained space for Jonathan Meese's self-cannibalizing, continuously metamorphosing environment, as well as a claustrophobic labyrinth by Bock. Meese and Bock, former students at the Hamburg College of Fine Arts, bear witness to the collector's predilection for the enfant terrible and for positions that challenge comfortable assumptions.

"I love outsiders," Falckenberg explained, "and I want to show that there are alternatives to Caspar David Friedrich."

Falckenberg also favors ensembles over single works, seeking to represent the full span of achievements by such favorites as Martin Kippenberger, Paul McCarthy and Christian Jankowski. (Most works not on display can be viewed in storage.) Typically, these are artists who share the collector's own critical sense of humor and somersaulting verbal wit. A fascination with the grotesque runs throughout the collection, lending it a no-holds-barred irreverence that might be difficult to represent at public expense.

"I'm not interested in reaching a broad public," he said, "and I have no official mandate. Instead, I can offer alternatives."

Generous and gregarious, Falckenberg has become a near-legendary figure on the international art circuit. His ubiquitous, dervish-like presence as a collector-commentator includes frequent guest appearances as a curator, lecturer and critic. His collected essays on contemporary art, now in their third printing, are scheduled to appear in English next year as "Reports from the Boiler Room of Art."

Given the expansive nature of the collector and his collection, it was clear that no conventional space would suffice for the museum. It was also clear that Bundschuh's central task would consist in providing a flexible context for the art on view and not a showcase for his own personal aesthetic. Wherever Falckenberg's collection was located in the past, he insisted on a minimalist setting from which the individual work could freely shape its own utterance. He has never had patience with the museum-building vogue for iconic statements by architectural superstars.

Nonetheless, his new museum is a far cry from an anonymous white cube. First of all, the harmonious grid of the original factory building lends an undulating rhythm to spaces large and small, while generous open areas provide multiple views into the exhibitions. Rather than a forced march, what is encouraged here is a provocative promenade.

The broad central staircase that seems to cascade down through five floors might serve as a symbol of the open, dynamic spirit of this institution. In the past, Falckenberg has shown works from other collections and given space to artists now represented in his own inventory. He has also curated museum-quality shows for artists and movements that he feels are neglected by the establishment, like the Viennese Actionist Otto Mühl. That he intends to continue in this spirit was made clear by the inaugural exhibition at the Phoenix Cultural Foundation. The focus was on the avant-garde artist Paul Thek, who died of AIDS in 1988.

Together with a team of curators, Falckenberg assembled more than 300 works by Thek - most from private collections and many never before exhibited in public. These were complemented by works of Thek's contemporaries and by younger artists like Mike Kelley, Damien Hirst and Matthew Barney who were inspired by him. The retrospective, first presented at the Karlsruhe Center for Art and Media, closed on Wednesday, but it will move on to the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid in February. This remarkable survey casts new light on a seminal figure who has long enjoyed cult status but has increasingly been relegated to the role of "artist's artist."

Starting in the 1960s, Thek, who was born in Brooklyn, New York, forged a multimedia, interdisciplinary aesthetic that combined painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, video and environments. Thematically, he explored the interaction of the mystical and the material, of decay and creativity, of melancholy and humor. He coined the phrase "work in progress," created the first so-called environments and founded an influential "Artists' Co-op" that stressed the social practice and responsibility of art.

Thanks to his vagabonding and his generous networking, a new spirit of dialogue was created between the European and American art scenes. In 1962, in recognition of her friend's role in redefining the parameters of creativity, Susan Sontag dedicated "Against Interpretation" to Thek; her "AIDS and its Metaphors," published in 1989, was also dedicated to him.

Falckenberg's retrospective has called renewed attention to Thek's achievements. A book of essays entitled "Paul Thek: Tales the Tortoise Taught Us," was recently published, and early next year MIT Press will release a catalogue book dedicated to the show.

Yet despite such remarkable achievements, museum professionals are not always happy with the growing presence of private competitors in their midst. Chris Dercon, the director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich, argues that such activities discourage the allotment of public funds for the acquisition and presentation of contemporary art. Collectors who were once engaged partners for the public museum often invest their energies and resources elsewhere. Indirectly, private initiatives can thus place increased pressure on public institutions to mount blockbuster shows with hefty box office returns. Young art, which often poses uncomfortable questions and challenges the wisdom of its elders, may thus be left out.

As a member of the board of several German art institutions and a frequent lender to public museums, Falckenberg sees his own role in a different light: as a mediator between the public and the private spheres.