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Berlin, the last capital of art

2020-07-11T05:22:00.732Z


The current collector flight from the German city questions the perpetual obsession to find an epicenter of art


The idea of ​​art capital is like bubbles in a soft drink. Sometimes they are needle-shaped: light, discreet, sophisticated. Others produce liveliness, effervescence and that always sizzling sensation. It has always happened to Berlin. With 3 operas, 9 symphony orchestras, 140 theaters, 350 galleries and a not inconsiderable number of museums, it has always fought for the title of European capital of culture. Its punk trail has always fueled that idea of ​​an experimental city capable of everything with almost nothing. Although we have always known that the art market is not its forte, the idea of gallery weekend was invented, which for years was the starting gun for the European artistic season. A laboratory city that has always functioned as a showcase, setting the pace, with exhibitions that were seen nowhere else but in this cheap and cosmopolitan city, the cradle of modernity, where so many artists have planted their nest.

A gaseous state that seems leaky. The Hamburger Bahnhof announced a few days ago that the Swiss collector Friedrich Christian Flick will withdraw the 2,500 works of modern art located in the Rieckhallen, the building that housed his collection, whose renovation he himself had financed and which the museum has rented until September, time when it will be demolished. Thomas Olbricht, heir to the Wella cosmetic empire, has also announced that he is heading to Essen and closes the Me Collectors Room on Auguststrasse, epicenter of the most established galleries in gentrified Mitte, as he will shortly be rescinding his old rental agreement. Barbara and Axel Hoffmann have the same in mind for their collection, one of the most unique in Germany, which is already looking at other cities to move everything they now have on display in an old brandy factory turned into a museum in the Lichtenberg district. And, if nothing prevents it, Julia Stoschek will leave in 2022, when the rental agreement that her foundation dedicated to video art has in the center of the city, near Checkpoint Charlie, ends. Although it does not seem so much a problem of money as of political laziness. With no deals in sight, some already glimpsed Berlin's gradual metamorphosis: from a creative hub to a fortress for property speculators. A couple of years ago, Erika and Rolf Hoffmann, another important collector couple, donated some 1,200 works to Dresden a couple of years ago, which have become the property of 20 public museums. A slump that is at the base of the meager budget of the current Berlin Biennale and is more than notable at the most important fair in the city, Art Berlin, canceled in December due to financial problems.

Headquarters of the Julia Stoschek collection in Berlin. GETTY IMAGES

They say that Stoschek has his eye on Los Angeles, encouraged by his friend Klaus Biesenbach, director of MOCA for two years, although today the Californian city is also far from being what it was when in 2015 it was awarded the label of capital of the art. The opening of The Broad and the more than 600 galleries made it the perfect city to settle. Eli and Edythe Broad joined a landscape of museums and foundations, such as those once created by powerful collectors such as J. Paul Getty, Norton Simon, and Armand Hammer, bringing the city to a state of considerable economic power. Rents were cheap then and there was little market pressure. California was the redoubt of the New World, the antithesis of a capitalist New York, where Hauser & Wirth also ended up settling in that multicultural wake. And surely that was what killed her. Los Angeles is as expensive today as New York and is far from being that free space where everyone was welcome. Neighbors' protests against gentrification have not stopped since in neighborhoods like Boyle Heights, where the Fuck Artwashing slogan has managed to get several galleries to shut down.

It often seems that every time a new museum or foundation opens, the art map jumps, or at least flinches. It happened in 2014 with Moscow, when the opening of Garage predicted a rebirth of this city that since 2008 had been forgotten. But it never worked, largely because the great Russian fortunes are out of the country. It happened again in 2017 with Dubai. It began to be spoken of as the new mecca of art, when the Louvre in Abu Dhabi arrived, along with the fairs, biennials and galleries that were committed to culture against oil, although in reality the city works more like a sort of Disney for adults who like cultural lungs. For years now, Hong Kong has also been a bit like Silicon Valley: a small corner of the world where everyone sets their eyes, although its positive spiral drags only money and not a scene.

To think that there is a center that orchestrates everything has become old. What if that new hub were the cloud?

London, too, has been slipping from the map of the great art capitals since Brexit came into force, greatly reducing the pulse that the city came to have when in 2012 the Frieze fair arrived and revolutionized a frantic scene that already had the museum of the world's most visited modern art, the Tate Modern, and the great auction houses. The United Kingdom has always been the great eye of Europe. For months, galleries like David Zwirner and White Cube have opened headquarters in Paris. What is expected is a London-Paris bicapitality, or that Paris assume, again, that historical role that it always had, only snatched away by New York in the 1950s. The opening of the next museum of the François Pinault collection, now postponed to 2021, reinforces that idea, although it is worth asking what we understand today as art capital in an increasingly decentralized global world. To think that there is only one center that orchestrates everything has become as old as dodging the new boom in virtual travel. Won't the cloud be the great cultural capital?

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2020-07-11

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