Francesca von Habsburg is a fourth-generation art collector and since 2002, chairman of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21), which she founded in Vienna, and whose tenth anniversary celebration was the highlight of the city’s Art Week last November. While organising the upcoming exhibition at TBA21 with Chief Curator Daniela Zyman, she spoke to Sleek about a decade of collecting, commissioning and figuratively “getting into bed” with artists…
The commissioning process involves a very deep level of trust. It doesn’t just emerge. If you meet an artist and you might be interested in the same thing, it still doesn’t mean you’re going to trust them to that level. It’s that leap of faith and it’s like if you date somebody for a while and then finally you land in bed with them. Something just goes “let’s take it to the next level, let’s get into bed.”
I wouldn’t advise going much higher than €150,000 to commission a new work. I get the feeling that there are a lot of collectors who don’t have foundations but still want the uniqueness a commission brings to a collection, and the excitement of working with an artist. Little by little people are finding it more interesting to do commissions. You might end up spending a lot less commissioning than you would if you were to buy at an art fair. Because chances are you’d fall in love with an artwork that is beyond your means.
The privilege I have with the name Thyssen-Bornemisza is that people trust us as a family that has great respect for art. With the foundation, instead of buying things and putting them in storage we would make them work and investigate them. Much of what is being produced now stays in storage, so being a foundation implies a much more active role. We decided to move from being just a collection to being a foundation 10 years ago because it’s the only way to honour these works of art.
I acquired Ragnar Kjartansson’s “The Visitor” for the collection. I was there in upstate New York when he shot it in this grand mansion on the Hudson. It’s been abandoned for years and these hippies live there amid symbols of wealth and power from the 1900s, but no running water. It’s one of his performance pieces that go on for a very long time. So we still have acquisitions at TBA21. It’s a step we like to take with those we’ve been working with over the years.
Young artists are very cynical now about the art market, because it seems that the art world is governed by the market. On the one hand, it has created an economy for contemporary art – as far as I can remember there was never money to do new projects. But it’s a market of supply and demand, artists have to continue their particular output, or else it can be a rather short career. Before, the music and film industries were controlled by big studios until the market was completely restructured by digital, and this might also change. People are moving together into communities and collectives and they are setting up their own initiatives. That’s interesting.
I believe in creating art projects in different places around the world. Because the foundation is not a kunsthalle, we don’t have that kind of responsibility to turn over a certain number of exhibitions per year. It makes a private foundation very spontaneous on many levels, and with a long-term vision for the artists. Some of the most memorable moments were those instances when we took the leaps of faith: Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s “Murder of Crows”, Eliasson and David Adjaye’s Pavilion for the 51st Venice Biennale, or Kutlu? Ataman’s “Journey Against The Current.”
There’s a difference between men and women in the art world. I think women have a sensitivity to certain things, and there are fewer ego issues. You can really enjoy a bilateral relationship with the artist when they’re not confronted with a big ego, and don’t have to beef up theirs. It’s a much easier and more productive working relation. Maybe it’s a mother-like thing that one has, caring enormously about how the artist feels, about making sure that everything is thought of and considered. And that’s something the artists completely appreciate and enjoy.
I grew up in a family that was very into its possessions, we had a lot of houses, a tremendous amount of art objects and jewellery and many wines. I grew up in a very personal environment with art and when I left I thought, “it’s too much possession.”
I spent many years in Dubrovnik restoring renaissance paintings. I restored pottery and china, water fountains in Marrakech and completed restorations of valuable cultural heritage. I love the idea that what we have a relationship with is works of art belonging to something. They don’t belong to you; you give it back to the community.
Francesca von Habsburg’s collection is listed in the BMW Art Guide by Independent Collectors – the first global guide to private and publicly accessible collections of contemporary art. Published by Hatje Cantz
Taken from Sleek 37, “Fake/Folk” issue.