Lecture 08 . Collections and Collecting . Passion and Strategy

30 September 2007

In recent years, some of Germany’s largest and most important public museums have had to cope with the loss of exhibition pieces withdrawn by their private owners. This raises the question of what it is that drives art collectors: is it their fascination with an artist’s work or a particular theme? Or are they operating within an economically driven art market purely oriented towards profit calculations? What are the effects of private collecting on the work and the tasks of public museums and their curators?

C/O Berlin Lecture 08 sheds light on the phenotype of the collector. It takes place in the context of this year’s “Art Forum Berlin” and also coincides with exhibition “Stripped Bare. The Body Exposed”, in which C/O Berlin presents photographs from the Thomas Koerfer collection for the first time publicly.