RKD STUDIES

Introduction

Besides the extensive archive, Geert van Beijeren and Adriaan van Ravesteijn (VBVR) also accumulated a considerable art collection, which Van Ravesteijn described as follows in 1999:

A gallery collects artists and garners an early mention in their biographies. It prefers to leave art collecting to the "real" collectors. But the accumulation that nevertheless takes place over the years has to occur somewhat surreptitiously, otherwise you find yourself competing with your customers. In the mid-1970s, when we were on the Willemparksweg, we came up with an advertisement for Art & Project which was a photo of the interior of the gallery during an exhibition in which Geert van Beijeren and I - coats and hats on - pose as visitors. The accompanying text reads: "We think what we do is so interesting, we regularly visit our own gallery".¹

'This advertisement was never used. We realised that this kind of bravado would only work against us: you have to be careful not to give the impression you?re keeping the best bits for yourselves. Most of the works we ultimately kept had been sitting unsold for years. As they moved with us, like loyal companions, from one house to the next, they gradually revealed to us how indispensable they were. If, later, someone showed an interest in one of these works after all, we were seized by a furious passion, like a mother whose children are in danger. We hid it under the bed, pretended we had given it to someone as a birthday present or, if that didn?t help, the aspiring buyer was rendered harmless through hypnosis.
In that respect our purchases from fellow galleries were considerably simpler. Then we were the customer and just paid the bill. This is how we added art works to the collection, which then placed the work of our own artists in a broader context, or provided contrasts, introducing an extra dimension. Does this mean there is a collection after all?

Cover image: Ben Akkerman, Art & Project, Slootdorp 1996

Ger van Elk
Paul Klee - Um den Fisch, 1926, 1970
Otterlo, Kröller-Müller Museum, inv./cat.nr. KM-133.311

Looking back, this 'collection' of more than 850 works cannot be seen as a private collection built up according to specific criteria. Its creation cannot be divorced from Art & Project. A gallery's 'trade stock' grows in fits and starts, and in passing. It is in no sense a thoroughly considered process of collecting. Only when Art & Project closed at the end of 2001 was it possible to take stock. The 'stock' that was transferred to Art & Project / Depot VBVR is a reflection of the gallery's programme and in many cases the development of the individual artists who were connected to it.

The works were housed in a number of museums, which Van Beijeren and Van Ravesteijn selected very carefully, taking the existing collections into account. The heart of the collection (approximately 450 works) was  at first on long-term loan to the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede. The emphasis here lied on large clusters and/or seminal works by artists such as Alan Charlton, Francesco Clemente, Adam Colton, Tony Cragg, Ad Dekkers, Ger van Elk, Barry Flanagan, Joris Geurts, Jos Kruit, Richard Long, Juan Muñoz, Nicholas Pope, Han Schuil, Peter Struycken, David Tremlett, Richard Venlet, Toon Verhoef, Emo Verkerk, Carel Visser and Leo Vroegindeweij, with sculpture being the most strongly represented discipline. Later on, when Lisette Pelsers became the director of the Kröller-Müller Museum in 2013, the sculpture collection was donated to this museum.

Alan Charlton
12 Parts Corner Painting, 1985
Enschede, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, inv./cat.nr. 4687

Around 135 works by such artists as Ben Akkerman, Daan van Golden, Gerald van der Kaap, Rob van Koningsbruggen and Emo Verkerk were initially loaned to the Kunstmuseum Den Haag and later donated. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam houses a group of around 70 works by Robert Combas, Fons Haagmans and Salvo. The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam was given a work by Ger van Elk and a collection of works by Jan Slothouber en William Graatsma.

More than 215 conceptual works from the period 1968-1975 by Robert Barry, Stanley Brouwn, Jan Dibbets, Daniel Buren, Gilbert & George, William Leavitt, Yutaka Matsuzawa, Allen Ruppersberg, Lawrence Weiner and others were initially taken as a subcollection by the Cabinet des Estampes du Musée d'Art et d'Histoire in Geneva, but moved (with curator Christophe Cherix) to New York in 2007 when it was gifted to the MoMA.

Cecil Beaton
Portret van Gilbert & George in het huis van de fotograaf, 1974
New York City, The Museum of Modern Art, inv./cat.nr. 152.2008