Sammel-Leidenschaften

In May 2005, Thomas Deecke, director of the Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen, will retire. For his farewell, he conceived the exhibition Sammel-Leidenschaften (Collecting Passions), with which he also draws a résumé of his activities.

The exhibition bears witness to his personal passion for certain artistic positions. He places his selection in the context of the art passion of all the private collectors who participate in the Neues Museum Weserburg.

The passionate commitment of private collectors to the art of their own time is what made this first collector’s museum in Germany, which opened in 1991, possible in the first place. With his personal selection of artists and their works, both those from the collection of the Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen and those from other lenders, he once again emphasizes the importance of commitment to the art of our time.
At the center of his selection is the conviction of the necessity of a ‘long breath’ (Reiner Ruthenbeck) in order to discover the beacons of permanence already in the present, to separate the ‘spirit of the age’ from the ‘spirit of the time,’ and to present art collecting also as an art of critical reflection on art.

On the one hand, it is a retrospective of the past years of collecting and exhibiting at the Neues Museum Weserburg, but at the same time it also has in mind the utopia of an ideal collection among the many private collections at the Neues Museum Weserburg. Furthermore, the selection also shows the conviction and the demand for lasting quality of certain artistic positions that lies behind the decision for a collection. In this sense, it is not only a retrospective, but also a thesis and an outlook on a possible future.

*from a letter by Lawrence Weiner to Thomas Deecke

Supported by the Bremer Landesbank – Kontakte zur Kunst and the
Cultural Investment Fund Bremen