Issue 2 - The Art Newspaper

8
FEATURE
Two leading collectors of
contemporary art in
London have revealed
their desire for their art
to remain on public display
in perpetuity.
David Roberts, the Scottish property
developer who last month inaugurated
a new home for his collection
in Camden Town, and Anita
Zabludowicz, the wife of a Finnish
financier and property investor who
has shown her collection in a former
Methodist chapel in Chalk Farm since
2007, both say they hope their collections
will continue to exist as discrete
entities long into the future.
“I do want the collection itself and
the foundation [that runs it] to continue.
I don’t want a situation where I
die and the whole thing gets sold off
and disappears,” Roberts says.
Zabludowicz says she has set up a
“structure” which involves her children
and includes trustees to shepherd
the collection she has assembled
with her husband, Poju, into the
future. “Our intentions are [for it] to
continue in the same direction, while
at the same time, also [give to] institutions
such as the Tate. It would not be
our wish for our collection to be sold
entirely or given entirely unless
absolutely necessary.”
The collectors, both of whom own
around 2,000 works of international
contemporary art and who organise
regular, curated shows in the art
spaces they run, are two of a growing
number of art buyers around the
world who are opening private
spaces to show their purchases. It
remains to be seen whether many of
these galleries or the collections that
fill them will survive past the lifetime
of their founders.
One art world insider who asked
not to be named is sceptical. “Forever
is a very long time,” he says. The longterm
costs of displaying art, with all
its ancillary expenses such as conservation,
storage and insurance, are
likely to deter all but the most committed
from attempting to create a
permanent display intended to survive
after they are gone, he adds.
These costs make it difficult to
even give art away for free. More
than two years ago Charles Saatchi
offered around 200 works, including
pieces by Tracey Emin, Grayson Perry
and the Chapman Brothers, as a gift
to the nation with enough funds to
THE ART NEWSPAPER FRIEZE ART FAIR Wednesday 10 October 2012
Forever is a very
long time
Building a great collection is one thing, but securing its long-term future is
another matter. Leading collectors ponder the price of posterity. By Cristina Ruiz
provide for the future cost of maintaining
the art. But discussions with
the government appear to have
reached a stalemate.
Crucially, Saatchi has no building
of his own that could display his collection
in the long term. Unlike
Roberts and Zabludowicz, who both
own the buildings they use to display
their art, he has instead leased a succession
of spaces for the various
incarnations of his gallery, which is
currently based in Chelsea.
Despite the government’s failure
to reach an agreement with Saatchi,
sources say the collector remains
committed to putting a large part of
his collection into a foundation
whose trustees will manage it, protect
its future and ensure it is publicly
displayed.
Collectors seeking governmentfunded
homes for their art have
rarely been successful. In 1992, the
Iranian-born Nasser David Khalili
offered his Islamic collection, considered
one of the world’s finest, to the
British government on a 15-year loan
on the understanding that the loan
“Private collectors can move quickly, they have more
money… it would be irresponsible for national
museums to commit [to young artists] so early”
would become a gift if a suitable
building were provided.
These conditions were not
accepted and Khalili withdrew his
offer. Twelve years later he announced
his intention to cover all the costs of
setting up a museum in London himself
“within five years” and to provide
a multi-million pound endowment to
cover the running costs. The museum
never materialised.
Museum partnerships
Public collections have been built
with the art bought by private individuals
and today’s contemporary art
collectors have a distinct advantage
over museums such as the Tate when
it comes to securing important works
of our time. Private galleries complement
public institutions, says Andrew
Renton, the director of Marlborough
Contemporary, who previously
worked with the London collectors
Freddy and Muriel Salem for 12 years,
helping them to assemble the
Cranford Collection.
“Private collectors can move more
quickly. They have more money for
acquisitions and they’re more ambitious
in their purchases, often buying
artists who are young and assembling
large groups of their work. By
definition it would be irresponsible
for a national museum like the Tate
to commit [to artists] so early; in a
way these public and private spaces
need each other,” Renton says.
But today everyone is a collector
and there is the
thorny issue, rarely
discussed in public, of
whether museums
actually want the art
assembled by the
plethora of contemporary
art collectors
active in today’s market.
Speaking at a
panel on private galleries
at the Art Basel
fair last year, the director
of Tate Modern,
Chris Dercon, noted
that many buyers purchase
and display
works by the same trendy artists in
spaces that all resemble one another.
Private galleries are now everywhere,
said Dercon. “They have the
same architects, the same white
walls, the same works of art,” he
said, adding that collectors need to
be more discerning when buying art.
He also noted that the programming
in private galleries lacks the depth of
museum displays. Public institutions
can give art a context, he said, which
is impossible for private collectors.
“At the Tate we can show something
contemporary from Brazil alongside
a Mondrian. A private collection
can’t do that because they don’t have
a Mondrian.”
Museums are also wary of collectors
wishing to impose conditions on
gifts or remaining involved in the
management of their art once it has
been transferred to a public collection.
The part gift/part acquisition
deal brokered by the dealer Anthony
d’Offay with the Tate and the
National Galleries of Scotland in 2008
for a large collection of contemporary
art divided into “artist rooms” which
tour regional museums around the
country is a rare exception.
The ambivalence works both ways.
Collectors who have tasted the thrill of
running their own curatorial programme
don’t want to see their art
subsumed into a larger museum collection.
“There’s a possibility we’ll
donate work to museums,” Roberts
says, “but I don’t think I’d want to say:
‘Here’s the collection’, and give it to
the Museum of Modern Art or the
Tate. I wouldn’t want it to disappear in
the vaults of some vast museum.”
Instead, says Roberts, “I like the
idea of doing things with regional
museums which often don’t have the
resources to buy contemporary art…
there are a lot of great spaces outside
London,” he says,
noting that he has
loaned works for an
exhibition opening
later this month at
the Hepworth
Wakefield in Yorkshire
which has “a very good collection
of works by Hepworth
and Henry Moore but very few contemporary
pieces”.
Frank Cohen, the DIY magnate
who has shown his collection of international
contemporary art in an
industrial estate outside
Wolverhampton for nearly six years,
once had plans to open a gallery in
Manchester called the Frank Cohen
Museum of Contemporary Art.
Speaking to a journalist from the
Independent in 2004, Cohen said: “I
want to put right the situation that,
outside London and people like
Saatchi with his gallery, there are no
privately run art galleries and collections.”
The museum never opened
due to disagreements with the developers
who owned the building. “It
would have been a great thing,”
Cohen says. “It’s Manchester’s loss.”
Now the collector says he “ha[s]n’t
got a clue” what will happen to his
collection in the long term although
he hopes it will remain “intact” and
that his children will “take it over and
continue where I left off.” Meanwhile,
Cohen is opening a London display
space in a former milk depot in
Bloomsbury with the art adviser
Nicolai Frahm to host loan exhibitions
and show art from both their holdings.
The gallery should open within
the next two months.
Zabludowicz shares the desire for
her collection, which focuses particularly
on emerging artists, to be seen
in multiple venues and she has
recently started staging shows in the
THE INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION OF CONTEMPORARY & MODERN ART
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Private collectors put on a
show: “The Summer Sessions”
at the Zabludowicz Collection
(above), “A House of Leaves”
at the David Roberts Art
Foundation (left) and
Saatchi’s leased
space in Chelsea
New York offices of
her husband’s private
investment
group, Tamares. She
has also launched an
artist residency programme
at Sarvisalo in
Finland where she and her husband
have a home. When asked to
consider where she wanted her collection
to be in 20 years’ time, she
said: “I hope that it will be on display
in many places and my current ambition
is to loan even more works from
the collection to public institutions so
that as many people as possible get to
see art that is being made right now.”
Ultimately, the proliferation of private
galleries has made more art
accessible to more people, usually for
free. Many of these spaces run education
and outreach programmes and
welcome students. Roberts, for example,
is planning a research library in
the Camden Town headquarters of
his collection. However, only time
will tell which galleries and collections
are here to stay.
• “A House of Leaves: First Movement”,
which includes work by Louise Bourgeois,
Thomas Houseago, Martin Kippenberger and
Rebecca Warren, is on display at the David
Roberts Art Foundation (until 10 November),
Symes Mews, NW1 7JE. The foundation will
stage performances of works by Nina Beier,
Chosil Kil, Alvin Lucier, Eddie Peake and
Steve Reich on 11 October at 7pm
• “To Hope, to Tremble, to Live: Modern
and Contemporary Works from the David
Roberts Collection” is at the Hepworth
Wakefield in Yorkshire from 27 October to
3 February 2013
• “Matthew Darbyshire: T Rooms” (until
2 December) and “Zabludowicz Collection
Invites: Richard Sides” (until 21 October) are
on show at the Zabludowicz Collection, 176
Prince of Wales Road, NW5 3PT
NAVY PIER
19—22
SEPTEMBER
2013
ZABLUDOWICZ: PHOTO BY STEPHEN WHITE, DAVID ROBERTS ART FOUNDATION: © 2012 MARK BLOWER, SAATCHI GALLERY: © 2009 MATTHEW BOOTH, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED