About us (long version)
Collecting art is often a private matter. What is not uncommon among artists – working together, cooperating in a collective – is rather rare among collectors. We as Art’Us Collectors’ Collective already have the collective idea in our name: pooling four art collections from Berlin, Düsseldorf, Munich and Stuttgart into one platform on which we act together. At a time when private commitment to art is particularly necessary and important.
The Art’Us Collectors’ Collective is a non-profit association. This non-profit approach is important to us. To share art, to convey art, to lend art – and thus to support exhibitions and artists (without loan fee). In our opinion, art should not be made invisible in the warehouse and in the private houses of collectors, but should be made accessible to the public.
A benefit for art
A collective always has corrective momentum, but it enables multiple thinking and sharing. It bundles strengths, ideas and visions, creates synergies. We think further about the term “collective” because it is the real key to our self-image. Our association of committed private collectors of contemporary art aims to make our own collections available to curators – and to make them accessible to a broad public through exhibitions.
Above all, we would like to see a benefit for the artists. The collective character of the Art’Us Collectors’ Collective is intended to enable maximum promotion of the individual artistic positions: through the larger number of available works, which in their diversity build a horizontal and vertical field of tension that can’t exist within the framework of one's own, singular collection.
Young art in view
We have a particular focus on young art: we want to enable the first exhibitions by young artists and thus create a preamble for subsequent exhibitions, promote and initiate publications on exhibitions, and develop new networks through our own curatorial projects. We on top realize our own exhibition ideas in different formats in the private or institutional environment.
We believe in the sensual in art, but also in the fact that our senses are sharpened by art. Art allows us to understand the world better, helps us to orientate ourselves in it, to get involved with new, strange and different things. We understand contemporary art as a mirror of our society, as an opportunity to escape our own cocoon and to constantly question and redefine our attitudes.
Participation
Collecting art, as Janneke de Vries, director of the Weserburg Museum for Modern Art in Bremen put it, is “more than pure enthusiasm for art and its view of the world”. “It is also more than the desire to constantly surround yourself with works of art by acquiring them and locating them in your own environment.” In the hands of passionate collectors, art strives towards the public, to connect the dots, to encourage discourse, to inspire others. Our collective concern is participation – the joy of letting other people participate in what moves, stimulates and motivates us.
Website and database – a virtual exhibition hall
Our website is a digital contact point for those interested in art, artists and curators. The exclusive online database with images and keywording of our works of art is available to exhibition organizers, museums and art associations. We see it as a virtual showroom – with access on a project basis. Loans in the context of the collective are named with the provenance "Art’Us Collectors’ Collective ". Please contact us by email at us@art-us-collective.com!
Art’Us Collectors’ Collective is an amalgamation of four private collections in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Munich and Stuttgart. We expressly see this collective as expandable and we look forward to welcoming other collectors with a passion for a lively exhibition culture and for bringing the art to the fore.
The collections in dialogue
Exciting discourses and important dialogues result from the diversity of the four contemporary, both abstract and representational collections, which deal with sociological, psychological and political topics, from conceptual photography to Asian art. These works delimit each other, complement each other and offer overlaps. Exciting dialog situations arise in line with the dictum of the English sculptor Antony Gormley: "Art alone is nothing, art must be shared."