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It is the result of the constructive and successful collaboration between the Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart and the collector, which began in September 2004 with the first major overview exhibition of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection and has since been continued with a dense series of thematic and monographic presentations. The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection is undisputedly one of the world's largest and best collections of contemporary art. The donation by the private collector is not subject to any special conditions and, in view of its size and quality, can be described as unique in the post-war period. The majority of the works are familiar to the public from presentations of the collection at the Hamburger Bahnhof. With 250,000 visitors last year, the museum is one of the most successful centres for contemporary art.

Friedrich Christian Flick explains: "The selection is based on works of museum significance, mostly major works by the respective artists. When I was interested in an artist and then decided in favour of his art, I always tried to collect in depth and put together blocks of works. I also wanted to reflect this in the donation. I have also included works that have a direct or indirect connection to Berlin or Germany. I am parting with so many of my favourite pieces with both joy and a little melancholy, but especially with great confidence in Berlin - knowing that I am doing the right thing for the artists and the museum."

Klaus-Dieter Lehmann comments: "The donation is much more than a gesture from a collector. It has been chosen wisely in view of the museum's existing holdings and is a special expression of a shared understanding of how to build a collection. The almost four-year collaboration with Friedrich Christian Flick has borne fruit in the most wonderful way through this generous donation."

The works:

The list of names alone is impressive. With the exception of the photographs by Albert Renger-Patzsch, the donation includes works from the last forty years, i.e. the collection area of the Hamburger Bahnhof. Names such as Vito Acconci, Robert Barry, Marcel Broodthaers, John Cage, Nam June Paik, Dan Graham, Dieter Roth, Gordon Matta-Clark and others epitomise the conceptual and border-crossing art of the 1960s/70s. The middle generation of the 1980s is very well represented with names such as Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Stan Douglas, Isa Genzken, Rodney Graham, Douglas Gordon, Martin Kippenberger, Axel Hütte, Pipilotti Rist, Thomas Schütte and others. Other artists such as Eija-Lisa Ahtila, de Rijke / de Rooij, Jason Rhoades, Christoph Büchel, David Claerbout, Andreas Hofer, Raymond Pettibon, Anri Sala and Wolfgang Tillmans belong to the generation of the 1990s, who continue to play a leading role in shaping the art scene today.

Only a few works from this important collection are highlighted here. The donation of one of the central works by Bruce Nauman, "Room with My Soul Left Out, Room That Does Not Care" from 1984, is extraordinary in itself. The interior sculpture is the largest and most spectacular work in the series of his famous corridor sculptures. The "Saloon Theatre" from 1995-1999 by Paul McCarthy, an American artist of the same age who is currently very successful, is also significant in his oeuvre and characteristic of the artist's way of working. The museum considers itself fortunate that Stan Douglas' work "The Sandman", created in Berlin in 1994/95, has been added to the museum's collection together with the thematically related photo series "Potsdam Allotments". It is not only its reference to Berlin that is interesting, it is also a key work in the oeuvre of the internationally renowned artist.

The large-format joint work by Isa Genzken and Wolfgang Tillmans is just as spectacular as the donation of "Truth Study Centre" by Tillmans. With 37 display cases, this work fills an entire room, a collection of material that can be regarded as an "inner" spiritual battery in Tillmans' oeuvre. As site-specific installations, both works are a continuation of the collection of over 20 artist's rooms begun at the Nationalgalerie/Hamburger Bahnhof. There are also spatial installations by Franz West "PA 1", Diana Thater "Delphine", Roman Signer "Helicopter with Spray Can", Jason Rhoades "A Few Free Years", Richard Jackson "5050 Stacked Paintings", Dan Graham "Three Linked Cubes / Interior Design for Space Showing Videos", by Peter Fischli/David Weiss " Visible World", Rodney Graham "School of Velocity" or Christoph Büchel "Training Ground for Training Ground for Democracy" are unique acquisitions in this respect and extremely pleasing for the museum. The overall collection also includes important photo series of great value: the early interiors by Thomas Ruff are key works in his oeuvre. The interior series by Candida Höfer and the large photographs by Axel Hütte ideally complement the museum's collection. 22 drawings by Raymond Pettibon fulfil a museum desideratum in relation to the history of recent drawing art.

A special place in the truest sense of the word is occupied by Dieter Roth's approximately 40 metre long "Garden Sculpture", a complex work that brings together all facets of his oeuvre in a huge spatial installation using different media and materials. The complex of works by Nam June Paik, some of which are early works such as "Light Bikini for Opera Sextronique" from 1966 or "TV Chair" from 1975, as well as the performance photographs by Vito Acconci or the "Pipe alphabet" by Broodthaers, bring together extraordinary works that are a great asset for a museum. "The Shepherd", painted by Georg Baselitz in 1966, has often been referred to as "The Wall Breaker". The painting has a very special connection to Berlin and the recent German past and is therefore of outstanding importance for the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.

The previous collaboration between the Hamburger Bahnhof and the collector Friedrich Christian Flick - the exhibitions:

In 2003, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the collector concluded a contract, initially limited to seven years, for the presentation of the collection. The first survey exhibition "Friedrich Christian Flick Collection" in 2004/05 was the largest museum exhibition of contemporary art in a European museum and covered approximately the last forty years in selected works of the highest quality. The exhibition covered the entire area of the Hamburg railway station, including the Rieck Hall, which had been specially remodelled as a museum extension at the collector's expense. The presentation, spread over 13,000 square metres, provided an initial, thematically structured insight into the collection, which had not previously been on display as a complete complex. Friedrich Christian Flick gave the museum the greatest possible freedom in dealing with his collection. It was Flick's declared intention to create a new kind of relationship between collector and museum. The exhibitions have impressively documented this exemplary relationship with the collector from the museum's point of view.

After the first major exhibition, which was almost unrivalled in its wealth of material, the question of the reduction of artistic production was then posed in contrast with the theme of "Almost Nothing". Like the subsequent exhibition "Beyond the cinema - the art of projection", it was an excellent example of thematic exhibitions from the collection. "Beyond the cinema - the art of projection", which took up the current theme of film in the visual arts, was developed by the staff of Hamburger Bahnhof together with the Canadian artist Stan Douglas and Christopher Eamon, curator of an American private collection. The inclusion of an artist from the collection in the exhibition design was one of the new paths successfully taken here with the support of the collector. In 2007, the museum curated a thematic exhibition entitled "there is never a stop and never a finish" on the occasion of the early death of the American artist Jason Rhoades, whose major works are represented in the collection, which was dedicated to the use of discarded or prefabricated materials in contemporary art as a reflection on the inflationary mass production of Western societies.

The monographic exhibitions presented artists who had not yet made a major appearance in Berlin. Urs Fischer, a younger, internationally recognised Swiss artist who now works in Los Angeles, was presented in his first exhibition in Berlin in 2005. He was followed in 2006 by Richard Jackson, an American artist from the generation of Bruce Nauman and Paul McCarthy, who was previously known to only a few in Germany. The Swiss-born artist Roman Signer, one of the most popular "artist-artists", received a positive response from the media and the public in 2007 with the most extensive exhibition of his work in Germany to date. The series of monographic exhibitions will be continued in March 2008 with the first German Turner Prize winner Wolfgang Tillmans. The retrospective of Bruce Nauman planned for autumn 2009 will certainly be a highlight.

Information about the Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart on the website