Artur Walther (born October 9, 1948) is a German-American art collector focused on exhibiting and publishing contemporary

photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

and video art. A graduate of

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate school, graduate business school of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university. Located in Allston, Massachusetts, HBS owns Harvard Business Publishing, which p ...

, Walther was a General Partner at

Goldman Sachs The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered in Lower Manhattan in New York City, with regional headquarters in many internationa ...

until his retirement in 1994. He began collecting photography in the late 1990s and later established The Walther Collection, which is open to the public at its museum campus in

Neu-Ulm Neu-Ulm (, ; Swabian: ''Nej-Ulm'') is the seat of the Neu-Ulm district and a town in Swabia, Bavaria. Neighbouring towns include Ulm, Senden, Pfaffenhofen an der Roth, Holzheim, Nersingen and Elchingen. The population is 58,978 (31 Decembe ...

, Germany and its Project Space in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

Early life and education

Artur Walther was born in 1948 in Ulm, Germany. He graduated from the

University of Regensburg The University of Regensburg () is a public research university located in the city of Regensburg, Germany. The university was founded on 18 July 1962 by the Landtag of Bavaria as the fourth full-fledged university in Bavaria. Following groundbr ...

in 1975. In 1977 he earned an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA) is a professional degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration; elective courses may allow further study in a particular a ...

from Harvard Business School.

Career

Walther worked in the field of international investment banking. He established one of the first groups focused on interest and currency swaps on

Wall Street Wall Street is a street in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs eight city blocks between Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway in the west and South Street (Manhattan), South Str ...

and was a co-founder and co-chairman of the

International Swaps and Derivatives Association The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA ) is a trade organization of participants in the market for derivative (finance)#Over-the-counter derivatives, over-the-counter derivatives. It is headquartered in New York City, and has c ...

. In 1983, he became co-head of Goldman Sachs’ worldwide capital markets group and was the founding partner of Goldman Sachs’ operations in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

Retirement

In 1994, at age 46 Walther retired and pursued his interests in

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...

, design, and photography. Walther studied at the

International Center of Photography The International Center of Photography (ICP) is a photography museum and school at 84 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. ICP's photographic collection, reading room, and archives are at Mana Contemporary in Jer ...

and took classes with artists such as Bruce Davidson, Mary Ellen Mark,

Joel Meyerowitz Joel Meyerowitz (born March 6, 1938) is an American street, portrait and landscape photographer. He began photographing in color in 1962 and was an early advocate of the use of color during a time when there was significant resistance to the ide ...

Stephen Shore Stephen Shore (born October 8, 1947) is an American photographer known for his images of scenes and objects of the banal, and for his pioneering use of color in art photography. His books include ''Uncommon Places'' (1982) and ''American Surfaces ...

and also became acquainted with

Bernd and Hilla Becher Bernhard "Bernd" Becher (; 20 August 1931 – 22 June 2007), and Hilla Becher, née Wobeser (2 September 1934 – 10 October 2015), were German conceptual artists and photographers working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their e ...

. Fascinated by the practices of typology, taxonomy, and seriality, he began to collect photography. The works of ''Neue Sachlichkeit'' (

New Objectivity The New Objectivity (in ) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against German Expressionism, expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the ''Kunsthalle Mannheim, Kunsthalle' ...

) photographers such as

August Sander August Sander (17 November 1876 – 20 April 1964) was a German portrait photography, portrait and Documentary photography, documentary photographer. His first book ''Face of our Time'' (German: ''Antlitz der Zeit'') was published in 1929. Sande ...

and

Karl Blossfeldt Karl Blossfeldt (13 June 18659 December 1932) was a German photographer and sculptor. He is best known for his close-up photographs of plants and living things, published in 1929 as ''Urformen der Kunst''. He was inspired, as was his father, by n ...

, and the industrial photographs of the Bechers, formed the nucleus of his collection. Walther joined the Architecture and Design Committee for the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, the Photography Committee of the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

, the Photography Committees of Bard and Vassar Colleges, and he became a Board Member of the

Storefront for Art and Architecture Storefront for Art and Architecture is an independent, non-profit art and architecture organization located in SoHo, Manhattan in New York City. The organization is committed to the advancement of innovative positions in architecture, art and des ...

and the International Center of Photography. In 2003, as chair of the exhibitions committee at the International Center of Photography, Walther spearheaded the establishment of its Triennial of Photography and Video. Walther has participated in the

Art Basel Art Basel is a for-profit, privately owned and managed, international art fair staged annually in Basel (Switzerland), Miami Beach (US), Hong Kong and Paris. Art Basel provides a platform for galleries to show and sell their work to buyers, an ...

br>Art Salon
series, contributed to ''Art Basel'' Magazine and to ''Mutations: Perspectives on Photography'', and organized exhibitions at Paris Photo and Les Rencontres d’Arles, where his nominees for the 2011 Discovery Award,

Mikhael Subotzky Mikhael Subotzky (born Cape Town, South Africa, 1981) is a South African artist based in Johannesburg. His installation, film, video and photographic work have been exhibited widely in museums and galleries, and received awards including the KLM ...

and

Patrick Waterhouse Patrick Waterhouse (born 13 August 1981) is a British artist. His work involves photography, drawing and graphic design. He has published books of his work and been exhibited internationally. Since 2011 he has been editor-in-chief of ''Colors'' ma ...

, won the grand prize. In December 2011, Walther was named one of ''Art+Auction'' magazine’s “Power 100.”

The Walther Collection

From the early 1990s onward, Walther traveled extensively and expanded the collection to include photography and video art from Asia – specifically China – and Africa, incorporating major works and series by, among others,

Ai Weiwei Ai Weiwei ( ; , IPA: ; born 28 August 1957) is a Chinese contemporary artist, documentarian, and activist. Ai grew up in the far northwest of China, where he lived under harsh conditions due to his father's exile. As an activist, he has been ...

, Zhang Dali, Samuel Fosso,

Rotimi Fani-Kayode Rotimi Fani-Kayode (20 April 1955 – 21 December 1989), born Oluwarotimi Adebiyi Wahab Fani-Kayode, was a Nigerian photographer who at the age of 11 moved with his family to England, fleeing from the Biafran War. A seminal figure in British con ...

David Goldblatt David Goldblatt HonFRPS (29 November 1930 – 25 June 2018) was a South African documentary Photographer noted for his dedicated portrayal of the South African peoples within the political landscape of the apartheid era.Weinberg, Paul.David ...

, Seydou Keïta,

Santu Mofokeng Santu Mofokeng (October 19, 1956 – January 26, 2020) was a South African news and documentary photographer who worked under the alias ''Mofokengâ''. Mofokeng was a member of the Afrapix collective and won a Prince Claus Award.Prince Claus Fun ...

, J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, Wang Qingsong, Jo Ractliffe, Song Dong, Mikhael Subotzky,

Guy Tillim Guy Tillim (born 1962) is a South African photographer known for his work focusing on troubled regions of Sub-Saharan Africa. A member of the country's white minority, Tillim was born in Johannesburg in 1962. Poplak 2011. He graduated from the ...

Malick Sidibé Malick Sidibé (1935 – 14 April 2016) was a Malian photographer from a Fulani ( Fula) village in Soloba, who was noted for his black-and-white studies of popular culture in the 1960s in Bamako, Mali. Sidibé had a long and fruitful career as ...

, and

Zhang Huan Zhang Huan (; born 1965) is a Chinese artist based in Shanghai and New York City. He began his career as a painter and then transitioned to performance art before making a comeback to painting. He is primarily known for his performance work, but ...

. In June 2010, Artur Walther opened his collection to the public with the inauguration of The Walther Collection, a four-building museum complex in a residential area of Neu-Ulm/Burlafingen, Germany. Supported by the Walther Family Foundation, The Walther Collection is dedicated to promoting new scholarship through an in-depth exhibition and publication program. The inaugural exhibition, ''Events of the Self: Portraiture and Social Identity'', was organized by

Okwui Enwezor Okwui Enwezor (23 October 1963 – 15 March 2019) was a Nigerian curator, art critic, writer, poet, and educator, specializing in art history. Enwezor served as artistic director of several major exhibitions, including Documenta11 (2002) and th ...

and integrated the work of three generations of African photographers with selections of modern and contemporary German photography. The second annual exhibition, ''Appropriated Landscapes'', was organized by Corinne Diserens. The exhibition opened in June 2011, featuring photography and video exploring the effects of war, migration, energy, architecture, and memory on the landscapes of Southern Africa. The collection's third exhibition on African photography, ''Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive'', opened in June 2013. Curated by Tamar Garb, ''Distance and Desire'' brings together late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century photography from Southern and Eastern Africa, set in dialogue with recent photography and video by artists engaging with the archive. ''Events of the Self'', ''Appropriated Landscapes'', and ''Distance and Desire'' are accompanied by exhibition catalogues co-published by Steidl. Walther opened a second exhibition venue, The Walther Collection Project Space, in New York in April 2011. In New York, Walther has presented exhibitions on Jo Ractliffe, August Sander, Seydou Keïta, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, and the three-part exhibition series ''Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive''. With over 1,400 works, the Walther Collection is considered one of the most significant holdings of contemporary Chinese and African photography in the world.

Publications

* Enwezor, Okwui,
Contemporary African Photography from the Walther Collection: Events of the Self: Portraiture and Social Identity
', Göttingen: Steidl, 2010. * Diserens, Corinne,

', Göttingen: Steidl, 2011. * Garb, Tamar, ''African Photography from The Walther Collection: Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive'', Göttingen: Steidl, 2013.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Walther, Artur 1948 births Living people German art collectors 20th-century American art collectors 21st-century art collectors German curators Harvard Business School alumni University of Regensburg alumni Goldman Sachs people 20th-century German art collectors