Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection

The TBA21 Collection reflects the vision of its founder, Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, who, upon being captivated by Janet Cardiff's installation “To Touch”, established the foundation in 2002. TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary swiftly shifted its focus and commitment from collecting artworks to commissioning artistic projects and sharing contemporary artworks with numerous museums and public institutions worldwide. And so, most of the artworks in the TBA21 Collection result from long-term and personal collaborations between Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza and the artists. 

The first commission entering the TBA21-Collection was Kutluğ Ataman’s Küba (2004) [1]. Instead of showing this work in a white space, or at least a stable building, Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza saw the potential of this artwork elsewhere, and so during May and June 2006, this award-winning film installation traveled aboard the Negrelli, a converted container barge, up the Danube River from the Black Sea to Vienna. Slowly, against the current, Küba navigated Europe’s oldest trade route and cultural artery through Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Hungary, and Slovakia to its heart in Austria. At each stop, in each country, a new work specifically commissioned in partnership with TBA21’s chief curator Daniela Zyman has been presented in dialogue with Ataman’s installation. “Looking back, it was not only the creative process of a new commission that intrigued me but also its potential in a social and political statement forging a path through what was at the time a burgeoning new Europe, based on values that embraced freedom and equality”, says Thyssen-Bornemisza about the project [2]. Kutlug Ataman’s “Küba” was donated to the Reina Sofia in 2021.

The way that Janet Cardiff’s “To Touch” and Kultug Atamans’ “Küba” entered the collection, and –  in the case of the “Küba” – left, showcases how the TBA21 Collection has grown over the past 20 years and is currently caretaking for more than 1000 artworks with all their complexities. 

Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza's ongoing commitment to the collection and its goals has been reflected in recent years through TBA21 on_stage, a platform dedicated to commissioning audio and video works strongly tied to community-based activities within the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. This project was initiated due to the pandemic's restrictions. The artists who created works for this platform have helped shape the collection in the past years.

Experimentation in art, performance, architecture, music, ecology, and science, as well as fostering artistic and scientific research and collaboration, lead to many trajectories which are reflected in the collection. These artworks often mirror a process of learning, of reevaluation, an intellectual and affective change in thinking and behavior that bears the potential for individual transformation. According to the Italian political theorist Romano Alquati, learning is “a kind of machine for thinking the present, in order to give form to the ‘not yet’ and in order to attempt to imagine the ‘new.’” [3] Learning, as a human right and the exercise of social freedom, opens the debate on what counts as knowledge and the ways in which it can be accessed, guarded, and passed on. 

This is the TBA21 Collection, a vessel for artistic knowledge to be consciously activated in processes of interaction in order to create the “now”.