Art Collector Julia Stoschek May Be Closing Her Private Berlin Museum After Facing Off With the City’s Hardball Real Estate Industry

The art collector Julia Stoschek may be closing the Berlin
location for her collection in 2022. The possibility of losing the
esteemed collection is a new blow for Berlin following an exodus of
art collections due to difficulties caused by the city’s
uncompromising real estate industry.

The lease is up in two years at Stoschek’s large ground floor
space on Leipziger Strasse, which the Düsseldorf-born collector had
opened to a throng of visitors in 2016.

The billionaire video art collector has been actively looking
for a future site for her collection in Berlin after it became
apparent that the company that owns the property would not sell the
building to her. According to a report in Welt on
Sunday, May 10, the building’s owners had also asked for a
significant rent increase in light of the prefabricated concrete
building’s façade undergoing renovations. In a statement
on social media shared a day after the first reports emerged, Julia
Stoschek comments: “There are considerations in this direction” and
that “there are still a few more crucial conversations to be
had.”

This is the third collection to announce its closure or
departure from Berlin in under a month. Just last week, collector
Thomas Olbricht announced that his Berlin space, the Me Collectors
Room, would close as he relocates to Essen. The esteemed Flick
Collection, 1,500 works of art which have been on loan to the
Hamburger Bahnof since 2004, is also being withdrawn in 2021 after
it became clear that the landlord would demolish the building
it was housed in, a gallery behind the historic museum. Udo
Kittelmann, director of the Hamburger Bahnhof, described the loss
of the Flick Collection as “very painful” in a statement to
the press.

According to the first report in Welt (the
newspaper is owned by media conglomerate Axel Springer SE—Stoschek
is married to its CEO Mathias Döpfner), the famous collector is
“angry,” given the fact that she had invested millions in the
renovation of her Berlin rooms and had spoken to all the
various officials “in vain” about the possibility of finding an
alternative to shutting down.

There are rumors that Stoschek is looking to Los Angeles, a city
she says she loves, and where she has been spending increasing time
in recent years. It is also where her friend Klaus Biesenbach runs
MOCA. Artnet News reached out to Julia Stoschek to ask about
the possibility of moving the collection to Los Angeles and to see
what kinds of discussions the collection had with the city of
Berlin, but did not hear back by press time. She later posted on
social media that she is still in the decision-making process about
leaving Berlin.

Despite the very real issues of rent hikes, buildings being
demolished, and hardball real estate companies in Berlin, it is
hard to blame gentrification and unfair treatment from public
officials for the plight of the extremely wealthy people behind
these esteemed collections. Nevertheless, Berlin will certainly
miss Stoschek’s challenging and adventurous programming. The
Taggespiegel describes Berlin politicians’ “delayed
enthusiasm” for projects like Stoschek’s, adding that it took two
years for Berlin’s Senator for Culture, Klaus Lederer, to step foot
in her location. Artnet News reached out to Lederer’s office to ask
what kinds of discussions had been had with the collector, but did
not hear back by press time.

In a recent interview with Artnet
News, the collector said she is working on digitizing the 850 works
she owns, which are mostly video art or time-based media art. She
has one of the most important private collections of art in
Germany, including works by Arthur Jafa, Elaine Sturtevant,
Wolfgang Tillmans, and Barbara Hammer.

[This article was updated on the evening of May 11 with a public
statement from Julia Stoschek Collection’s social media, where the
collector stated that she was still in the decision-making
process.]

The post Art Collector Julia Stoschek May Be Closing Her
Private Berlin Museum After Facing Off With the City’s Hardball
Real Estate Industry appeared first on artnet News.