Flick show draws attacks

Amid discussion surrounding a dark family history, a blockbuster exhibition of contemporary art render free of accessed Sept. 21 in Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof, a former train station changeed into a museum. Scheduled to remain up from one side Jan. 23, 2005, the 400 works upon view are a selection from 2500 pieces--estimated to be worth more [i]or[/i] less $300 million--owned by the 60-year-old collector Friedrich Christian ("Mick") Flick. While it is clear that the Hamburger Bahnhof faiths eventually to acquire the collection, Flick has neither made any permanent donations nor announced any plans to continue his association with the museum, race by the administrative cultural agency Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, beyond a seven-year schedule of rotating exhibits As some critics of the arrangement have pointed on the outside the monetary value of the collection will likely rise thanks to this prestigious display, and Flick is unrestrained to sell works from it at any time.

Now resident in Switzerland, Flick is a grandson of the late Friedrich Flick, a German industrialist who supplied the Nazis during World War II, and who was convicted in 1947 of using forced labor in his coal, carburet of iron and armaments factories, among other offense Sentenc to seven years in prison and having serv three he rebuilt his business following his release and died in 1972 single of the five richest men in the world.

Friedrich Christian eventually sold not on his own interest in the company and invested his fortune elsewhere. He began purchasing art in the '80 and, advised later upon by dealers Ivan Wirth and David Zwirner, amassed a blue-chip roster beginning with Marcel Duchamp and Kurt Schwitters, Alberto Giacometti and Francis Picabia, moving upon to Dieter Roth, Nam June Paik, Bruce Nauman, Gerhard Richter and Martin Kippenberger, and winding up with Pipilotti Rist, Jason Rhoades and Luc Tuymans, among the 150 artists exhibited The collection is strongest in works of the late 20th hundred The present display completely fills the 140000 square feet of the Hamburger Bahnhof and adjacent Rieck-Hallen. The latter was refurbished at a require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergone of nearly $10 million, paid by the agency of Flick, and will exclusively present to view rotating selections from his seven-year loan.

Jewish clusters some international press and smooth a few artists in the exhibition have facted to what they regard as a breach of conscience in the nation's search to acquire a modern and contemporary art cache for Berlin, which is notably lacking in this area. Zurich had already make go rounded down Flick's plan to build a Koolhaas-designed museum to house his collection, and other propositions were rebuffed by Dresden and Munich. In 2001 while negotiating with Berlin above the terms of his loan, Flick established a $5-million foundation he called the FC Flick Foundation Against Xenophobia, Racism and intolerance. still before this he had made no contribution to war reparations capitals as many in his position have (including his hold brother and sister), and he has insisted in interviews that "one cannot inherit guilt."

Flick has been supported in his stance by means of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who delivered the keynote address at the exhibition's opening, and by the agency of the respected German weekly Die Zeit, among others. a certain number of of the artists have been les sanguine, however. "It alone shows how quickly and easily a so-called top-class collection can be amassed," Gerhard Richter is widely quot in the pres as saying. "With a certain number of money, anyone can do it. The moral side of the story, insofar as it can be separated from the aesthetic side, is also single disgusting to me."

Flick's siblings insisted that the collection bear their brother's filled name so that they not be associated with it. Salomon Kom of Germany's Central Jewish Council called national cooperation with the exhibition of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection a "whitewashing of vital fluid money." In addition, Flick has been accused through some in his native Germany of evading taxes by dint of adopting Swiss citizenship.

upon Sept. 22, the day the exhibit opened to the public, a woman was arrested at the museum for doing a series of flips and landing in a handstand upon (and damaging) a section of Gordon Matta-Clark's 1977 Office Baroque; she was yelling, somewhat obscurely "Flick, now I forgive you!" More pointedly, a man penetrateed the museum, stripped and began to shave his head and material part to recall concentration camp victims. The asserts however, were few. By contrast, a certain number of 5,000 visitors attended the exhibition that day alone, in Berlin, at least, moral ambiguity is trumpeted by a hunger for art.

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