Venue:The talk will be online on webex
https://hgb-leipzig.webex.com/meet/support_buero
and can be followed in Room 3.04 on display
Partner:Support-Büro
As part of the lecture series "Art as a Profession - Professions in Art" we talk to:
Iris Solbès,
Managing Director KunstLANDing
of the Neuer Kunstverein Aschaffenburg e.V.
"Art connects our society. It makes people step out of their homogenous, closed circles and face new perspectives. Especially in challenging times, innovative artistic positions fulfill the task of a lighthouse in the surf. Because artists have an unerring instinct for putting their finger on the pulse and initiating debates that are both forward-looking and vital for survival."
We are pleased to start the next round of the series *Art as a Profession - Professions in Art* with Iris Solbès, with which the Support-Büro invites you to get to know the institutions of the art field with their unwritten rules. We talk to directors of art associations, an art market researcher, gallery owners, producer galleries and other actors about their relationship to artists and art, but also about how they finance themselves and their institutions, how they come to terms with social demands and political circumstances, and how they react to current upheavals.
Iris Solbès studied economics and human psychology. Since 2021, she has been the managing director of the Neuer Kunstverein Aschaffenburg e.V. (www.kunstlanding.de), which shows changing exhibitions of contemporary art on 600 square meters in the KunstLANDing, a building of the Alte Brauerei, in the heart of the city. The association has been consistently dedicated to contemporary art for almost 30 years, with 4-6 exhibitions a year and many events beyond that. The orientation is international, but in regular series young debutants and the regional art scene are given a platform.
An art association lives from private commitment. Largely through its own efforts, the association renovated the three-story house from 1872, which is now a listed building, to the point where it could be used for exhibitions from December 1998. What motivates the 450 members of the association, how is such an association kept alive and the members retained? And how does the director cooperate with an association whose members are very committed and without whom the exhibition house could not exist?
What other funding is there? How are networks and contacts in the city - with residents and political decision-makers - maintained, and how does the Kunstverein live up to its claim to represent the interests of Aschaffenburg's independent art scene? And last but not least: How does the Kunstverein reach its artists and what can it do for them?
Iris Solbès (*1970, Memmingen) studied economics and psychology and ethnology in Frankfurt am Main and Marburg after graduating from high school (art, Latin). During her studies she founded the cultural magazine FRIZZ in Aschaffenburg and Würzburg with a core team and in the course of this an agency for media development. During this time, she also worked as editor-in-chief, journalist (including DPA), author and copywriter. She then designed the online medium bewegungsmelder for Brinell City AG, which was launched as one of the first major culture and media portals of the New Economy. On behalf of the cultural department of the city of Würzburg, she launched and established the project KulturGut and other cultural media. Besides her professional life, she managed a creative allotment restaurant for several years.
Since 2015, she has accompanied the new Kunstverein Aschaffenburg as 2nd chairwoman and curator, and since 2021 she has been managing the exhibition house KunstLANDing of the Neuer Kunstverein Aschaffenburg e.V. as managing director.
Talk with Cornelia Renz and Julia Brodauf, Support Office of the HGB.
