Change at the helm of the DZ BANK Art Collection

Luminita Sabau bids farewell

Change at the helm of the DZ BANK Art Collection

www.corporate-portal.dzbank.de

Following almost 20 years at the helm of the DZ BANK Art Collection Luminita Sabau is now leaving DZ BANK AG on 30 June 2011. Since 1992 the art historian has been in charge of the corporate collection of contemporary art and visual media, which comprising as it does more than 6,000 artworks by some 600 artists is one of the most extensive collections of its kind and renowned the world over.

“Luminita Sabau has an outstanding reputation. It is thanks to her foresight and her courage that we capitalized on a young medium long before photography started was has been an extraordinary boom in the art market. Her idea to hand over some of the pieces at the heart of our collection to Frankfurt’s Städel Museum, where they will soon be made accessible to a wider public, is the culmination of what has been an incredibly successful commitment to our institution,” says Wolfgang Kirsch, CEO at DZ BANK. On 21 June he will bid an official farewell to Luminita Sabau as part of the opening of the upcoming exhibition in the ART FOYER of the DZ BANK art collection.

Not only did Luminita Sabau lay the foundations for the collection, she also developed art education programmes for employees and visitors, initially for DG BANK, and as of 2001 for its successor institution, DZ BANK. For eight years, she was head of the jury responsible for the bank’s scholarship programme, which has produced a number of reputable photographic artists.

Sabau has curated a host of presentations of our corporate collection at prominent art institutions in Europe, the United States and Japan. In 2006, at its Frankfurt headquarters, she established the bank’s own ART FOYER, which is open to the public and holds regular exhibitions with items from its own collection.

Prior to joining DZ BANK Luminita Sabau worked from 1982 as a curator at the DAM – Deutsches Architektur-Museum in Frankfurt/Main, following which she was the director of the art collection at the ZKM – Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe. An expert in art, she has written and edited numerous publications, been a member of various international organizations and is a much sought-after judge and guest speaker.

Christina Leber, curator at the DZ BANK Art Collection since 2008, will take over the position on 1 July. Leber, who holds a doctorate in art history, has already worked for the collection as an assistant on previous occasions, namely from 1996 to 1999 and from 2004 to 2007.

While completing her studies Christina Leber worked at art collections of a range of different commercial enterprises in the United States and in Germany. From 1999 to 2001 she was the managing director of the “2nd berlin biennial.”