‘Art in Progress’: the woman collector Ingvild Goetz in Munich

Abstract

Since the nineteenth century, American women have distinguished themselves not only as art collectors, but also as the founders of museums. Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) was one of the earliest, and Peggy Guggenheim (1898–1979) is surely the best‐known example. Even the foundation of the New York Museum of Modern Art can be traced to the initiative of three women collectors, Lillie P. Bliss (1864–1931), Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (1874–1948) and Mary Quinn Sullivan (1877–1939). By contrast, until well into the twentieth century, in Europe and Germany in particular, the collection and public presentation of art appears to have been a male‐dominated field in which the activities of women like Helene Kröller‐Müller (1869–1939) in the Netherlands represented an exception rather than the rule. Recent research demonstrates that Ingvild Goetz was the first woman in Germany not only to emerge as an independent collector of contemporary art, but also to found a private art museum in 1993. The aim of this article is to elucidate the individual preconditions, collecting strategies and forms of art mediation that led to Ingvild Goetz’s internationally recognised reputation—due to the quality of her collection and art promotion—as the ‘Grande Dame of German art collections’, making her into a role model for young collectors like Julia Stoschek in Düsseldorf.