Scheme to buy Wrapped Reichstag…
…and display Christo’s archive in the Bundestag
By Rita Pokorny | From issue 228, October 2011
Published online 19 Oct 11 (Museums)
A foundation has been launched to raise the €10m needed to purchase the Wrapped Reichstag collection from the artist Christo. Negotiations also began last month to organise the display in Berlin’s Reichstag of the artist’s drawings, collages, archive photographs and even lengths of rope and fragments of the aluminium-covered material that shrouded the historic building, as part of the project.
Roland Specker, the project manager of Wrapped Reichstag, 1971 to 1995, said: “We have created a foundation to buy the collection. There will be an agreement with the German Bundestag, represented by its president Norbert Lammert, to present the collection as an exhibition at the Reichstag.”
Specker has set a deadline of a year to raise the necessary funds. He is also proposing to transfer ownership of the 400-strong collection to the Berlin-based Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. “The collection will be completely out of mine and my heirs’ hands,” said Specker. The heritage foundation would take responsibility for maintaining and providing access to the collection.
Christo insists that any agreement to sell must include the condition that the collection be kept together and no items sold on. Collector Dieter Rosenkranz, Christo’s friend, supports the project, the Berliner Morgenpost reported.
