Art Foundation
at the Museum Ludwig

The foun­da­tion is ded­i­cat­ed ex­clu­sive­ly to ac­quir­ing and ex­pand­ing the hold­ings of its col­lec­tions of mod­ern and con­tem­po­rary art. Cor­re­spond­ing­ly, its found­ing pur­pose is aimed at pro­vid­ing as­sis­tance to col­lec­tors of con­tem­po­rary art who are in­ter­est­ed in do­nat­ing works that rep­re­sent de­sir­able and mean­ing­ful ad­di­tions to the hold­ings; it is al­so con­cerned with fa­cil­i­tat­ing the ac­qui­si­tion of pro­hibi­tive works of art. The main pur­pose of the foun­da­tion is thus based on the task of fund­ing art and cul­ture by sup­port­ing the Mu­se­um Lud­wig in Cologne in the form of giv­ing it pos­ses­sion of art­works and groups of works from the foun­da­tion. This ob­li­gates the foun­da­tion to trans­fer its works to the mu­se­um as “per­ma­nent loans,” to in­te­grate them in­to its col­lec­tions, and put them on equal foot­ing with the art al­ready in its pos­ses­sion. Thus for the first time in 2008, just a few days af­ter the foun­da­tion was estab­lished, around 180 works on pa­per by Sig­mar Polke were trans­ferred from the first Rein­ing­haus and Friebe-Rein­ing­haus do­na­tion.

The ba­sis for estab­lish­ing the foun­da­tion was pro­vid­ed by the 2007 Law to Strengthen Civic En­gage­ment. This law is chie­f­ly con­cerned with pro­vid­ing tax re­lief for do­na­tors and there­by of­fers an at­trac­tive fis­cal in­cen­tive for col­lec­tors who might be he­s­i­tant about mak­ing do­na­tions. The foun­da­tion’s par­tic­u­lar strength there­fore lies in pro­vid­ing an im­pe­tus for so­cial pa­tro­n­age and is in­tend­ed to en­cour­age the ex­pan­sion of the col­lec­tion in ac­cor­dance with the mu­se­um ad­min­is­tra­tion.

On the oc­ca­sion of his farewell as the Mu­se­um Lud­wig's long-term di­rec­tor, Kasper König or­ganized a ben­e­fit auc­tion in fa­vor of the Kun­st­s­tif­tung im Mu­se­um Lud­wig . In to­tal, six­ty-nine works by in­ter­na­tio­n­al artists were auc­tioned in Cologne and Lon­don in Septem­ber-Oc­to­ber 2012. The en­tire net pro­ceeds of 1.5 mil­lion eu­ros went to the foun­da­tion and serve to sup­port the Mu­se­um Lud­wig.

Cur­rent­ly, clear in­di­ca­tions have been an­nounced for fur­ther do­na­tions of im­por­tant groups of works by con­tem­po­rary artists, pri­mar­i­ly from art-mind­ed Cologne resi­dents and pa­trons, but al­so from else­where.