Han Nefkens

Last updated

Han Nefkens (born 1954) is a Dutch writer and art collector. Nefkens purchases and commissions international contemporary art with the specific purpose to give it on long-term loan or donate it to museums.

Contents

Born in Rotterdam in 1954, Nefkens studied journalism in France and the United States. He worked as a radio correspondent in Mexico for eleven years. He discovered in 1987 he was HIV-positive.

In 2001 he started the H+F Collection of contemporary art, which consists of photographs, videos, installations and paintings by – among others – Jeff Wall, Sam Taylor-Wood, Bill Viola, Shirin Neshat and Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Nefkens places them on long-term loan to museums in the Netherlands and abroad, including the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais in Dunkirk.

In 2006, Nefkens set up ArtAids, a foundation that uses art in order to increase awareness of HIV/AIDS and improve the lives of people living with HIV.

In addition to being a collector and patron of the arts, Nefkens is also a writer. His first book, Bloedverwanten ("Blood Brothers"; 1995), is a semi-autobiographical novel about two brothers who are both infected with the AIDS virus. This was followed by a collection of short pieces,Twee lege stoelen ("Two Empty Chairs"; 2005). The book De Gevlogen Vogel notities over een herwonnen leven ("Borrowed Time: Notes on a Recovered Life"), which was published in 2008 and has been translated into Spanish, is a report of the lengthy recovery process of Nefkens' HIV induced encephalitis.

"Giving is one of the most underrated values in society", Nefkens says. "By setting up something that I can share with others, I become part of the world. Sharing is the antidote to loneliness, when you share you are not alone." [1]

Bibliography

YearDutch TitleEnglish TitleEditorial
1995BloedverwantenBlood BrothersWereldbibliotheek
2005Twee lege stoelenTwo Empty ChairsVan der Graff
2008De Gevlogen Vogel notities over een herwonnen levenBorrowed Time: Notes on a Recovered LifeAtlas
2011Han Nefkens. De eerste tien jaarHan Nefkens. The first ten yearsAtlas

Related Research Articles

Calouste Gulbenkian British-Armenian businessman and philanthropist

Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, nicknamed "Mr Five Per Cent", was a British-Armenian businessman and philanthropist. He played a major role in making the petroleum reserves of the Middle East available to Western development and is credited with being the first person to exploit Iraqi oil. Gulbenkian travelled extensively and lived in a number of cities including Istanbul, London, Paris and Lisbon.

Robert Mapplethorpe American photographer

Robert Michael Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits, and still-life images. His most controversial works documented and examined the gay male BDSM subculture of New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A 1989 exhibition of Mapplethorpe's work, titled Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, sparked a debate in the United States concerning both use of public funds for "obscene" artwork and the Constitutional limits of free speech in the United States.

Avram Finkelstein

Avram Finkelstein is an American artist, writer, gay rights activist and member of the AIDS art collective Gran Fury.

John Currin American painter

John Currin is an American painter based in New York City. He is best known for satirical figurative paintings which deal with provocative sexual and social themes in a technically skillful manner. His work shows a wide range of influences, including sources as diverse as the Renaissance, popular culture magazines, and contemporary fashion models. He often distorts or exaggerates the erotic forms of the female body, and has stressed that his characters are reflections of himself rather than inspired by real people. "His technical skills", Calvin Tomkins has written, "which include elements of Old Master paint application and high-Mannerist composition, have been put to use on some of the most seductive and rivetingly weird figure paintings of our era."

Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art Art museum in Catalonia, Spain

The Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art is a contemporary art museum situated in the Plaça dels Àngels, in El Raval, Ciutat Vella, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The museum opened to the public on November 28, 1995. Previous directors were Daniel Giralt-Miracle (1988–1994), Miquel Molins Nubiola (1995–1998), Manuel J. Borja-Villel (1998–2007), and Bartomeu Marí (2008-2015), while the current director, since 2015 is Ferran Barenblit.

Thomas Ammann

Thomas E. Ammann was a leading Swiss art dealer in Impressionist and twentieth century art, and a collector of post-war and contemporary art.

Allan Sekula was an American photographer, writer, filmmaker, theorist and critic. From 1985 until his death in 2013, he taught at California Institute of the Arts. His work frequently focused on large economic systems, or "the imaginary and material geographies of the advanced capitalist world."

Kunstmuseum Basel Art museum in Basel, Switzerland

The Kunstmuseum Basel houses the largest and most significant public art collection in Switzerland, and is listed as a heritage site of national significance.

Elmgreen & Dragset

Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset have worked together as an artist duo since 1995. Their work explores the relationship between art, architecture and design.

Paul Thek was an American painter and, later, sculptor and installation artist. Thek was active in both the United States and Europe during his life, staging a number of ambitious installations and sculptural works throughout his lifetime. Posthumously, he has been widely exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, and his work is held in numerous collections including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and Kolumba, the Art Museum of the Archdiocese of Cologne.

The Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation is a non-profit arts foundation located on North Carolwood Drive in the Holmby Hills district of Los Angeles, California. Modern and contemporary artwork in the Frederick R. Weisman collection are displayed in a "living with art—house museum" context, with guided public tours by appointment with the foundation.

Archives of American Art

The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washington, D.C. and New York City.

Hilde Teerlinck is a Belgian curator, and General Director of the Han Nefkens Foundation - Barcelona.

Fotomuseum Winterthur Art museum in Winterthur, Switzerland

Fotomuseum Winterthur is a museum of photography in Winterthur, Switzerland.

Desiree Dolron Dutch photographer

Desiree Dolron is a Dutch visual artist who lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her photographs portray a variety of styles and subjects, including documentary photography, still life, portraits and video works.

Kim Victoria Abeles American artist and academic

Kim Victoria Abeles is an American interdisciplinary artist and professor emeritus currently living in Los Angeles. She is described as an activist artist because of her work's social and political nature. She is also known for her feminist works. Abeles has exhibited her works in 22 countries and has received a number of significant awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship. Aside from her work as an artist, she was a professor in public art, sculpturing, and drawing at California State University, Northridge from 1998 to 2009, after which she became professor emerita in 2010.

Philippe Méaille

Philippe Méaille is a French author and art collector, and the founder and president of the Château de Montsoreau-Museum of Contemporary Art. Currently, Méaille owns the world's largest collection of Art & Language works.

Thảo Nguyên Phan is a Vietnamese visual multimedia artist whose practice encompasses painting, filmmaking, and installation. She currently lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City and has exhibited widely in Vietnam and abroad. Drawing inspiration from both official and unofficial histories, Phan references her country's turbulent past while observing ambiguous issues in social convention, history, and tradition. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Vietnam and abroad, at many public institutions, including the Factory Contemporary Art Centre, Ho Chi Minh City; Nha San Collective, Hanoi; Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; Times Art Center in Berlin, Timișoara; and The Mistake Room, Los Angeles.

Ramin, Rokni, Hesam are a Dubai-based artist collective from Iran, consisting of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian who's working and living together described as a project, since 2009.

<i>Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump</i> Painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat

Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump is a painting created by American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1982. The artwork, which depicts a boy with a dog, is among the most expensive paintings ever purchased. It was purchased for over $100 million in 2020, becoming Basquiat's second most expensive painting following Untitled (1982), which was sold for $110.5 million in 2017.

References

  1. Nefkens, Han. "Han Nefkens donates a work by Pipilotti Rist to the Fundació Joan Miró-La Vanguardia - 2010-06-12".