Learning from the American Fundraising Model: A European Perspective March 2014 | страница 12

03. harnessing
a curator’s
passions
Corinna Thierolf,
Head Curator of Post-War Art,
Pinakothek der Moderne (Germany),
Class of 2009
Not every museum curator is also an ardent
fundraiser. But to achieve her goals as curator
of post-war art at Germany’s Pinakothek der
Moderne, Corinna Thierolf has harnessed both
her passion for art and her dedication to securing support for that art. “As a fundraiser you
have to be contagious and transfer your passion to other people,” she says. And in raising

money to stage exhibitions and purchase artworks, she has built up a small but committed
network of devoted art lovers on both sides of
the Atlantic.
As a curator, Thierolf has worked to build on
the remarkable artistic connection between the
United States and Germany which had a centre
in Munich in the 1960s, when Munich’s Friedrich & Dahlem gallery was showing landmark
works of conceptual and minimalist artists such
as Donald Judd, Cy Twombly, Joseph Beuys and
Walter De Maria. “My goal was to build a collection reflecting the transatlantic dialogue that
was so important for post-war art,” says Thierolf.