Falckenberg Collection

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With the F.C. Gundlach Collection and the Falckenberg Collection, the Deichtorhallen Hamburg is able to draw from two of the largest private collections in Hamburg.

Two of the three branches were created based on these collections: the House of Photography with the F.C. Gundlach Collection, and the Falckenberg Collection located in former Phoenix factory building in Hamburg-Harburg.

The mission of the Deichtorhallen is to preserve and research these important collections and to present them to a broad audience. Thus, the two venues continually offer insights into the diversity and depth of the collections in a changing series of special exhibitions.

The Falckenberg Collection comprises more than 2200 works by 450 artists. Its focus is the art of the counterculture, which emerged after the Second World War as an uprising against the elites and the art establishment particularly in the United States and Germany. The collection has won several international awards and was voted among the top 200 collections in the world by the influential New York magazine ARTnews. It emphasizes unconventional thinkers and outsiders of the art world whose subversive, often ironic and even sarcastic or cynical views run counter to traditional notions of the good, the true, and the beautiful in representative art.

From early on, the collection has focused on works from the late 1970s and ’80s with artists such as Werner Büttner, Martin Kippenberger, Jürgen Klauke, Astrid Klein, Albert Oehlen, and Franz West, which are juxtaposed with works by American artists from the same generation such as Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Paul McCarthy, and Richard Prince. Moving back in time, these positions have been augmented with works by the previous generation of progressive international artists such as Hanne Darboven, Öyvind Fahlström, Dieter Roth, and Paul Thek. A third area of the collection includes more recent positions of contemporary art. With works by Monica Bonvicini, Andrea Fraser, Christian Jankowski, Sarah Lucas, Raymond Pettibon, Jason Rhoades, Daniel Richter, Christoph Schlingensief, Santiago Sierra, and Andreas Slominski, the collection offers a profound overview of German and international representatives of the counterculture of the 1980s and ’90s.

An important part of the 6000-square-meter exhibition space is dedicated to large-scale installations of multimedia art by artists such as John Bock, Thomas Hirschhorn, Mike Kelley, Jon Kessler, Jonathan Meese, Anna Oppermann, and Gregor Schneider. The basement level features a storage facility with some 400 works on sliding shelves.

Another focus of the collection is on photography with works by international artists such as Lewis Baltz, Victor Burgin, Sophie Calle, Larry Clark, Willliam Eggleston, Valie Export, Lee Friedlander, Martha Rosler, Martin Parr, and Wolfgang Tillmans. Every year, two to three special exhibitions take place with works by artists who are not represented in the Falckenberg Collection, or from whom the collection only includes a few works. The Deichtorhallen Hamburg aims to continually present the collection in different contexts.

Harald Falckenberg

Harald Falckenberg (1943–2023) was a jurist, entrepreneur, proprietor of the respected publishing house for art theory Philo Fine Arts, and author of numerous publications on art. He first exhibited his art collection, which he began compiling in 1994, in a building by the airport. In 2001 the collection moved to the former Phoenix factory building in Hamburg-Harburg. The building was acquired by Harald Falckenberg in 2007 and was made available to the Deichtorhallen on permanent loan along with his collection in 2011.

The exhibition rooms of the Falckenberg Collection are located in the Phoenix-Hallen in Hamburg-Harburg.

OPENING HOURS AND PRICES
The Falckenberg Collection has individual opening hours. Please go to VISIT to find out about the opening hours of the current exhibition.

HOW TO FIND US
By long-distance train/local transport: From HH-HBF, take the S3 in the direction of Neugraben, Buxtehude, Stade or the S 31 in the direction of Harburg Rathaus, Neugraben to Harburg station (13 min.). From there (S-Bahn exit Moorstr.) it is about 10 min. walk to the Falckenberg Collection. By car: A253 exit Hamburg-Wilstorf, A1 exit Hamburg-Harburg