Gertraud and Dieter Bogner - Collecting art, making ideas usable. (de) - a podcast by CastYourArt.com

Gertraud and Dieter Bogner - Collecting art, making ideas usable. 
 
Gertrud and Dieter Bogner began collecting in the late 1970s, after inheriting Schloss Buchberg, which is located in Kamptal in Lower Austria. The castle was set up over several centuries during the Renaissance with numerous extensions. Those who wander through the many rooms, courts, towers, corridors, and exterior spaces, located on several levels, feel as though they are wandering through a village, or getting lost in an enormous house. The sheer variety and sizes of the spaces raised the question to the new owners of how they could be sensibly utilized. More than thirty years ago, it was decided that the building would be used for contemporary art, at which time Gertraud and Dieter Bogner also began collecting art.
 
In the meantime, the castle was christened Kunstraum Buchberg, and, in contrast to other art spaces, has been housing permanently integrated, site-specific art since 1983. The arrangement of the collection was geared at first towards the geometrical-constructivist field, but then Monika Brandmaier took it in a more conceptual-associative direction when the collectors realized that each attempt towards an all-encompassing designation of its collection encountered disapproval from the participating artists.
 
The collection covers the work of Roland Goeschl, Dan Graham, Francois Morellet, Peter Weibel, Stanislav Kolibal, Heimo Zobernig, Thomas Kaminsky, and Dorit Magreiter. It addresses characteristics which connect the works beyond considerations of style and at the same time, provides a context for Schloß Buchberg as an art location with workshops, seminars, and research projects which challenge new phenomena in art and their points of connection in history. "The linkage of generations and the leaps forward and back"—therein, says Dieter Bogner, exists the life of this whole conception.
 
One project that was personally important to the two collectors and closely connected to the arrangement in Schloß Buchberg involves the engagement between the architectural and artistic work of the De Stijl representative Friedrich Kiesler and the establishment and support of the Kiesler Private Foundation. In 1997, the remainder of the estate of Lilian and Friedrich Kiesler was acquired and brought to Vienna through state funds. The fact that the structure and the development of the Kiesler Private Foundation was successful in Vienna is due to, among other things, the commitment of the two collectors. It was important to them to point out that the roots of geometric-constructivist art could also be found in Austria, as well as a versatile tradition of abstract, analytic, and constructivist thinking under Friedrich Kiesler, Mathias Hauer, Alois Riegl, and Sigmund Freud.
 
The Kiesler Private Foundation makes the Kiesler Archive accessible for research and grants an award for achievements in art and architecture every two years, which corresponds with Kiesler’s innovative beginnings and demonstrates how the Bogner collection continually challenges the times within these fields. The museum and collection are part of "a future-oriented idea which makes products, memories, and achievements of the past accessible so that one can develop the future ", according to the collectors, who take on the role of museum planners. In the last few years, Kunsthaus Graz, the Louvre, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in New York are among the many institutions that have profited from the Bogners’ consultation regarding museum conversion. (wh/jn)

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