Nine Artists in the Guggenheim Museum Permanent Collection

Deutsche Guggenheim was established in 1997 as a unique collaboration between the Deutsche Bank and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Through an ambitious modern and contemporary art exhibition program, Deutsche Bank and the Guggenheim Foundation promote the production of some of the best-recognized artists of the Twentieth and Twenty First Centuries. It was originally conceived as a five-year program, but the agreement was later extended to 15 years.

To commemorate its joint action with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Deutsche Bank announced that the work of nine artists, commissioned for the Deutsche Guggenheim Museum in Berlin, will be now part of the permanent collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The commission includes works by renowned artists Pawel Althamer, John Baldessari, Hanne Darvoben, William Kentridge, Julie Mehretu, Gabriel Orozco, Agathe Snow, Jeff Wall, and Phoebe Washburn; it comprises paintings, photography, large-scale sculpture, installation, and video. Each one of the commissioned works was specifically created for the Deutsche Guggenheim space in Unter den Linden, in Berlin, and where first exhibited there. Eight important works commissioned earlier, by Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter, James Rosenquist, Andreas Slominski, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Bill Viola, Lawrence Wiener, and Rachel Whiteread were transferred to the Guggenheim Museum in 2005.

Another selection of commissioned works will be part of the Deutsche Bank collection. These works will be on exhibit in public or common areas of the bank's headquarters and will be available as loans for other exhibitions, as has been the case of John Baldessari's work, currently in the lobby of the bank's New York offices, or Memory, Anish Kapoor's stunning installation now on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia.

Deutsche Bank maintains its exhibition space in Berlin, Deutsche Bank KuntsHalle, which starting in 2013 presents collaborative projects between independent curators, international museums, and cultural institutions, as well as frequent exhibitions of the Deutsche Bank Collection's holdings. Its collaboration with the Guggenheim Foundation will continue on the basis of the periodic presentation of specific projects.

The successful collaboration between these two institutions demonstrates the positive aspects of such cultural alliances, which make artistic production accessible to everyone and help the institutions hosting the exhibits become important drivers of art and cultural activity in the cities where they are located.