Art
The Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen Girozentrale is an enthusiastic sponsor of art and culture, especially in Frankfurt am Main and Erfurt, but also in the region of Hesse and Thuringia in general. Its sponsorship activities there are based on long established partnerships.
» Romantics room at the Städel Institute of Art, Frankfurt
Romantics room at the Städel Institute of Art, Frankfurt
With his will in 1815, Johann Friedrich Städel effectively laid the foundation stone for what today is an art collection comprising significant major works from all the important European movements from the 14th century to the present day. The Städel’s collection of drawings, which includes more than 100,000 works, is one of the most important of its kind.
In 1999, Helaba commenced a 10-year sponsorship of the Institute’s Romantics room and is financing its renovation. It made the commitment following the Städel’s "Gunst-Sammlung" initiative (a play on the words “Kunst-Sammlung” meaning “art collection”, and actually meaning “favour collection”), during which the entire museum was restored with the help both of Frankfurt’s business community and its private citizens.
MMK, Frankfurt’s museum of modern art
Frankfurt’s Museum für Moderne Kunst (museum of modern art, or MMK), which opened in 1991, is one of Germany’s finest museums and consequently occupies a particularly prominent place in the collective consciousness of the art world. It houses one of the world’s most outstanding collections of contemporary art and attracts huge numbers of visitors.
Helaba has had a firm partnership with the MMK for many years. In 1997 Helaba sponsored the joint exhibition the MMK held with New York’s Whitney Museum, "Views from Abroad". In 1999 it sponsored the video artist Bill Viola’s retrospective, and then in the year 2000 took on sponsorship of the whole of "Szenenwechsel XVIII", a two-year series of alternating exhibitions.
Its special interest in sponsoring contemporary art has brought Helaba recognition as one of the museum’s main patrons and, together with seven other Frankfurt-based companies, it will in future belong to the exclusive "3 x 8" group set up by the museum’s director, Jean-Christophe Amman.
Documenta12
As part of the S-Group, Helaba is once again to be one of the principle sponsors of Documenta in Kassel, the most important contemporary fine arts event in the world.
In 2002, Documenta11 attracted around 650,000 visitors to Kassel. There was a broad spectrum of modern art to both see and experience – painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, film and video, as well as performance art, sound art and architecture. In addition to lending its financial support, the S-Group, in collaboration with the organisers of Documenta, put on a particularly successful series of events complementing the interdisciplinary discourse to which Documenta11 was dedicated, namely on the issue of determining the medium of photography’s current position.
Art of Today - Inspiration for Tomorrow
Art creates lasting values and promotes dialogue with the present, and it’s for this reason that we see it as a worthwhile investment in the future. Our commitment can be seen not only in the museums and exhibition projects that we sponsor, but also in
» Helaba's own art collection, which more than almost any other is devoted to both young and established representatives of contemporary art.
Weblinks
Bill Viola’s video installation The World of Appearances and Stephan Huber’s Frankfurter Treppe: on display in the publicly accessible foyer of our Frankfurt headquarters