Sammlung Boros

Profile

What`s on in Berlin with pictures or without pictures

Christian Boros is the owner of an advertising agency with offices in Wuppertal and Berlin . He has been collecting contemporary art since 1990. Over this time, he has put together a private collection with around 500 works by artists such as Damien Hirst , Olafur Eliasson , Elizabeth Peyton , Wolfgang Tillmans , Anselm Reyle , Manfred Pernice , Tobias Rehberger , John Bock , Wilhelm Sasnal and Michel Majerus . He currently has comprehensive groups of works of 57 artists. Parts of the collection were previously shown to the public in two museum exhibitions.
The Boros Collection now has a permanent home in a converted bunker in Berlin -Mitte. The first presentation of selected exhibits will be exclusively works which incorporate the bunker space itself. Sculptures, room and light installations as well as performance works will create a new experience of the rooms in the bunker. Most of the works were installed and staged by the artists themselves. There was no curator. The artists sometimes altered or added to their works in order to overcome the sometimes difficult space, and some of the works were created especially
for the bunker.
The collection can be viewed only by prior appointment. There will be 1,5-hour guided tours every Weekend.

The Bunker

In 2003, Christian Boros bought the 1942-built bunker and started to prepare the conversion of the building for the collection of contemporary art. Jens Casper from the Berlin -based office Realarchitektur
was entrusted with the conversion. It took a year of planning and four years of conversion; in addition, the 1000 square meter roof space was turned into a penthouse complete with terraces and a roof garden.
The new private museum has 3000 m2 of exhibition space, with room heights varying from 2,30 to 13 metres. Many of the low intermediate floors were removed using diamond cutting technology - an extremely time consuming technique. In addition to this, the concrete floors that were cut out had to be broken up inside the bunker and then to be removed by hand. The 120 initial rooms were changed into 80 rooms. There is no daylight. The building's monumental character has been preserved: all evidence of the war has been left on the outside and inside one can still see the different uses of the building.