Prof. Thomas Girst (Global Head of Cultural Engagement, BMW Group): in conversation

Can I start by asking, what is “corporate cultural engagement”?

I would define “corporate cultural engagement” as part of “corporate citizenship”, the umbrella term under which you also find terminological entities such as “corporate social responsibility”. Many also speak of “corporate cultural responsibility”. The concept of corporate cultural engagement does not translate into any partnerships in a broad definition of the cultural realm but rather those long-term cooperations that lean more towards social sustainability than towards brand­building. The latter is seen in things like hiring an actor or a band to ramp up communications of a launch event, collaborating with an artist on the design of a product, or partnering with a commercial art fair, whereas institutional partnerships, say with museums, opera houses, or theatres define the parameters for the former.

This conversation with you about corporate cultural engagement leads me to ask how such engagement on a global scale could influence both national cultural policy agendas and international trends. Is there such a thing as “cultural policymaking” by corporate actors?

I am not aware of any countries that have rules or laws regulating how much companies should contribute to cultural activities. This means that all corporate endeavours with regard to culture stem from an organisation’s own initiative. This is a crucial fact to mention before we dive into this topic.

In that sense, there is no policy as such but there is a notion of right or wrong with regard to corporate cultural engagement once any company decides to become active in this field. Wrong, I would say, is jumping from event to event, not having any strategy in place, not providing any planning security in terms of long-term, sustainable engagement. In other words, we can define sponsorships based not on strategic thinking but solely on the affinities of the CEO or senior management as wrong – mostly because this tends to translate into wanting to decide on artistic content, which is a fundamentally flawed approach whichever way you look at it. A lot of things can be problematic when going down this road because that means the company is only answering the call for cultural engagement reactively. A proactive approach involves having a strategy in place that is based on the shared values of any one business enterprise and engaging in partnerships that are truly meaningful.

Here, it is important to differentiate between sponsorships and partnerships. To me, sponsorship focuses on moving financial resources from A to B and vice versa. These activities can be considered purely a monetary transaction, whereas partnerships are based on interaction. The main distinction between sponsoring and partnerships is the relationship you build. Partners communicate with each other, they look out for each other, they consider the benefits of a long-term commitment building on genuine curiosity about each other and a shared system of beliefs. Ideally the company should offer full artistic freedom; the company’s freedom takes the form of the freedom to decide who to collaborate with.

When you refer to the notion of “wrong” regarding corporate cultural engagement and sponsorships that are merely transactional, are you also thinking about situations of “artwashing”? This term tends to be used to describe the instrumentalization of art to distract from negative action and improve the public image of individuals, organisations, or governments.

I have never heard this term but would agree with your assessment. Keep in mind, however, that the art market itself is a 65-billion-dollar market. While I see museums and artists struggling, the arts are by definition a commercial enterprise, like it or not. The term may make sense when we apply it to companies engaging in questionable practices in the arts. After all, the art market is a rather unregulated global marketplace that is particularly prone to money-laundering. Yet, as I see it, it is not as strong as “greenwashing”, where higher standards apply and the demarcation of what constitutes true sustainability versus mere window-dressing is more obvious. Having said that, even strategically wrongheaded arts sponsorship may very well directly benefit artists or cultural institutions.

You talked earlier of the practice of hiring an actor or a band to ramp up communications and the notion of right or wrong with regard to corporate cultural engagement. Recently the band Coldplay have been called “useful idiots for greenwashing”Footnote¹ after announcing a partnership with Finnish oil company Neste to halve their world tour emissions. Coldplay’s tour has been separately criticised for collaborating with BMW, which is providing 40 rechargeable electric vehicle batteries to power the shows. BMW is an influential lobbyist for the German car industry, according to a report by Influence Map. Given that BMW is lobbying to prevent the EU from setting a deadline of 2035 for vehicles to be zero emissions only, have they been able to use Coldplay?

BMW’s revenue in 2021 was over 110 billion euros. Our core business is cars. I don’t think that simply in terms of scale, anything we may do as part of our cultural engagement could or should be considered “greenwashing” as true sustainability is what happens along the entire value chain when building a car. In the digital age, customers can see right through and cannot be fooled. Any attempt at “greenwashing” would thus be futile and destined to fail. All numbers regarding C02 emissions and electrification are on the table for everyone to see and judge. As for 2035, we are lobbying for an intensive expansion of the charging infrastructure so that electric mobility has a chance to become widespread. At the same time, legislation should be open to embrace alternative emission free technology such as hydrogen and fuel cell batteries while we are making the transfer from the combustion engine – a huge undertaking we are front and centre of. This will take time as we also need to consider the long-term well-being of over 130,000 employees and their families worldwide. When it comes to Coldplay, what is wrong with them approaching us to provide batteries so that they can power their shows with renewable energy? I applaud their efforts!

Going back to the notion of a proactive approach to corporate cultural engagement, when talking about a global player like BMW, it makes sense to focus on the global strategy. However, I assume that your organisation considers national and regional contexts as well. How do corporate global strategies and national or regional cultural policies relate to each other?

I believe that if you are committed to engaging in the arts on behalf of a major international company, you should consider the policymaking aspects of what it is that you are doing. When I am asked to take part in a panel discussion in India, for example, people come up to me ahead of time and tell me that I need to talk about the situation in Germany, where the government provides €12 billion to the cultural sector and private foundations and corporations give approximately €500 million. I am asked to emphasise that in a country like India, with 1.3 billion people, there is basically no infrastructure for culture, so there are virtually no public museums for contemporary art, not even a handful. I am also asked to state how crucial it is that the government does more for culture and that the same goes for affluent companies that want to create a positive, empowering image for themselves while also creating something meaningful in terms of corporate responsibility.

Naturally, the situation is different all over the world. When I speak in Italy, only a few hundred miles south of Germany, I like to use the ice cream with the cherry on top metaphor. I like to say that the ice cream is something that the government should provide. This means that governmental engagement in cities as well as in smaller towns should be a given, especially within a federal republic. In this metaphor, corporate engagement is the cherry on the top of the ice cream. However, I was once told by a distraught member of an audience that the ice cream part of the equation does not really exist in Italy: there is simply not enough government funding going into cultural infrastructure and into cultural projects, so the arts need to rely on corporate or private engagement. Another related issue is what happened in the United States, where cultural institutions are run like businesses because the financing of arts institutions relies for the most part on a board of trustees and their deep pockets. So, when the pandemic hit, many people in the cultural sector suddenly lost their jobs. In my opinion, you will only find an ideal situation regarding non-nationalist governmental commitment to the arts, or at least as close to ideal as we can get, in liberal, democratic countries such as Germany or Switzerland.

I would like to further discuss your metaphor about the relationship between corporate cultural engagement and cultural policymaking, the former ideally being the cherry while the latter is the ice cream. In Germany, where the government provides generous support for the arts, it might be easy to talk about how companies might add value by being the cherry on top of the ice cream. In other places, adding value might be less straightforward. When you talk in India, for example, and call for more public backing for the arts and culture, what happens? Can corporations exert their leverage in a way that fosters better conditions for the arts and cultural sector?

I think you need to lead by example. Richard Florida's assessment of the creative class being an important economic factor in post-industrial societies is important to consider. However, not all societies on this planet are post-industrial. As the remaining non-post-industrial societies continue to develop, certain measures need to be implemented for culture to also be able to blossom and flourish. Behind closed doors, our company does speak to policymakers. Even though BMW’s core business is not culture, our company can engage in a non-public dialogue about cultural engagement.

I do believe that it is possible to successfully lead by example not only when the wind is beneath your wings, but also when it is blowing in your face like we have experienced in recent years. Showing your commitment, showing your strength and supporting the arts is something truly aspirational. Talking the talk is important, but walking the walk is essential. Otherwise, things can go wrong, like we see with the critical attitudes towards the Sackler family for example, who many consider to be responsible for the opioid crisis in the United States and so partially responsible for the thousands upon thousands of people addicted and dying because of it. The Sacklers, of course, were one of the biggest patrons in the whole art world over many decades. There are entire buildings and wings of buildings of major museums around the world named after this family. And now, of course, it's interesting to see that it's been artists such as Nan Goldin, much more than the curators or museum directors who rely on this sort of funding, that have been highly critical of this kind of money coming in from companies. It was artists who finally convinced the Met and the Serpentine, the National Portrait Gallery and the Guggenheim to cut ties with this pharmaceutical juggernaut. The Liberate Tate art collective was behind the museum ending more than a quarter-century of money coming in from BP. As a company, you should know what you do. Criticality by artists remains essential and so does thinking of worst-case scenarios before you enter a partnership.

Knowing which way to steer can be achieved primarily by knowing your company’s values, by knowing what it is your organisation stands for, and then building on that to create the cultural policy that may also inspire those that are making policy decisions in the public realm.

You already mentioned that you openly discussed the lack of sufficient public funding for the arts in India and in Italy. What is your impression of this dialogue in more restrictive countries?

When it comes to more restrictive countries, globalisation plays an important role, regardless of whether you view globalisation as a positive phenomenon or are critical of it. Aspiring for intercultural dialogue through culture is a meaningful endeavour. However, such an undertaking is nothing new for a company operating on a global scale. Intercultural dialogue is the basis of any successful global company. As the Head of Cultural Engagement worldwide, I find myself working in Munich speaking to my Chinese and Asian colleagues in the morning, then to my Russian and African colleagues in the afternoon and at night to North and South America about what they do. I am not interested in telling them what it is that they should do within their own country because they should know best. All I can provide them with are the parameters in which they should get active in the arts. I can assist them with contractual agreements, and I can provide them with our knowledge, network, and know-how based on 50 years of cultural engagement, but they need to be the ones that decide.

Freedom of thought is something that is as central to BMW’s core business as it is for the arts. For example, BMW has been working with many artists from mainland China and Hong Kong. Some of them received the BMW Art Journey scholarship; others were commissioned to create a BMW art car. In both instances, they were always free to do what they deemed right. We need to grant absolute creative freedom to our artists on a global scale, no matter where they are, because that creative freedom is crucial also to our engineers and designers as it is what provides the basis for them to design the greatest cars on the planet.

Moving away from the relationship between corporations and creative artistic freedom, what kind of impact do political restrictions have on the arts, especially in countries where artistic expression is restricted? And what does this mean for corporations engaging in these countries?

Dialogue is an important factor. When working with artists and with cultural policymakers in different countries, you need to consider the sensibilities and the sensitivities regarding the coordinates in which these countries operate. Speaking to someone from South Africa as opposed to someone from India, China or the United States is not the same. All these countries are important markets for the BMW Group, and they are also countries in which we have engaged in culture for in some cases half a century.

One example I would like to showcase is our collaboration with Cao Fei, a great Chinese contemporary artist whose show at the UCCA in Beijing ended in May 2021. She is an artist, wife, and mother and has decided to be a resident of Beijing and not work from anywhere else on the planet. In an interview she gave to The New York Times, she said that she knows where the red line is, and she decides not to go there. With regard to her artistic creativity, she still finds she has enough room to express herself.

Another example is literature published in East Germany under Communist rule despite the censorship of the time. This environment heightened the artists’ sensitivity about getting the word out despite all the forces working against them. I wrote my PhD on “Art Literature and the Japanese American Internment” to find out how art can thrive in unfavourable, even hostile environments. How can art thrive when there is no material to create art, in the face of manipulation, censorship, and propaganda surrounding the arts? I am very hopeful that no matter what situation we find ourselves in, the arts will persevere. The arts are essential for expressing our way of seeing the world, of reflecting upon the world. Regardless of the circumstances, artists will find a way to express themselves and make themselves heard and find the right metaphors no matter how narrow the possibilities may be. However, this does not mean that the arts do not need our support, which is exactly why BMW tries to support the arts on a global scale. This means that our organisation needs to be aware of the coordinates in which we try to make this possible.

I would like to further explore the role of a global corporation in shaping cultural trends and policy at an international level by discussing your last statement about how successful global corporations know the parameters in which their businesses operate. While the relationship of public cultural institutions with corporate sponsorship is often under scrutiny, what would you say about corporations positively pushing the boundaries of such parameters?

I think if we look at the interplay of the arts and the criticism of businesses being involved in the arts, it is important to keep an open mind and maintain your curiosity while appreciating all parties involved. In this manner, corporations and the arts can achieve great things together. An organisation can decide against a collaboration but be just as mindful about the benefits that they might be missing. By this I mean intangible advantages the organisation could be benefitting from, such as new ideas and perspectives that you either don’t know of or that you don’t possess. Often this boils down to know-how or questions of network and rapport. You should also take any criticism to heart and reflect upon the things that artists should never give up on even while in the process of collaborating with a company.

For example, in 2012 we were partnering with the Olympics in the United Kingdom. At the same time, there was an event taking place called the Cultural Olympiad. We teamed up with the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) to host an exhibition of the BMW Art Cars. The ICA decided that they didn’t want to show the art cars in their own museum because they had planned their exhibitions so far in advance – and also, it might have been perceived as selling out to a company – and rightly so! So they thought it might be much more appropriate to present them in an actual parking lot since, after all, that’s where cars belong. This idea jumpstarted the whole notion of satellite spaces for the ICA, which has had a huge influence on other cultural institutions as well. BMW does not need to be seen in the traditional museum space. We are far more interested in branching out, breaking out of our comfort zone, reaching new people and new audiences, and engaging with new technologies. Bringing BMW Art Cars to an actual parking lot on six different levels allowed us to achieve something meaningful and special. Plus, the media loved it.

How is this approach applicable in places where the ground infrastructure for the arts is not as developed yet?

The same applies. A good example is the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India. We teamed up with them for their very first biennial, which nobody thought would get off the ground and actually happen. No one except the visionary organisers and founders. I realised then that when we put our full energy behind a project, especially as a successful international business enterprise that has been around for over 100 years, we also help others to not only see the uncharted territory ahead but to feel that if BMW is involved, it might be worth getting involved too. So, at the very early stages, we often help cultural institutions and cultural projects to get the visibility, the recognition, and the budget that they need to turn great pioneer ideas into a success. Our logo might therefore become a seal of approval showing that visitors may expect a certain quality, even if that quality enables platforms not for something merely affirmative, but rather for something that sets out to do more than simply please the onlooker.

If we look at current discourses in cultural policy, there is a growing emphasis on evaluation, impact analysis and evidence-based policymaking, among other topics. While these issues and the rationality involved have not remained uncontested among scholars and practitioners, the question of accountability of public spending on the arts and culture is valid. However, although companies are not required to legitimize their spending to taxpayers, they do need to create value for their shareholders. How do you go about looking for this value?

Coming back to the example of Germany where a good portion of taxpayers’ money goes into culture, I would like to see more thought go into the distribution of these funds. In Germany, you have hundreds of orchestras, thousands of museums, and many other institutions, all of which are underfunded for exhibitions, for getting the right creatives into the right places, and for acquisitions. But policymakers very often arrive at solutions like creating the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, which costs hundreds of millions of euros and with an annual operating budget of €50 million. Another example is the new Museum for Contemporary and Modern Art, again in Berlin, which comes at a price tag of hundreds of millions of euros. In Germany we find ourselves in a federalist system and to be frank, I would much rather see that very system being supported instead of creating something new and centralised over and over again just because it allows you to make an impact as a cultural policy maker for the few years you are in office.

So how do we navigate this situation? Firstly, I would say it’s important to not spend your organisation’s funds in areas where public funding is being withdrawn. This sets the wrong example, by making it appear as if private companies are filling the gap that is created after the public sector has pulled back. Here, we need to ask ourselves why the public sector is withdrawing funds. The answer is simple: because the taxes are no longer coming in. Why are the taxes no longer coming in? Because the companies have found some clever ways to avoid taxes, just like in the Anglo-American world, or they are making less profit. If companies are making less profit, they will also not be able to provide more budget when the public sector withdraws its funding. This is the mistake being made in this thought process, which I always find curious and which I wanted to correct in this conversation.

From a fundraising perspective, I agree that a decrease of public funding is never a strong case for supporting the arts. So, again, how does BMW go about looking for opportunities to create meaning, to create value?

You need to align your company’s cultural commitment with its goals while simultaneously considering transformation. In this case, we are talking about a general sustainable future that will also ensure that your company specifically has a future. Finding meaning within these parameters basically means that it's reliant in terms of: BMW relies on your definition of premium and of luxury. As a luxury and premium car manufacturer we could focus our efforts on only aligning our social or cultural commitment with our target audience’s taste. But then we would miss out on the opportunity to partner with great projects that, for example, allow us to collaborate with the opera to open this cultural art form to a wider audience. We believe that the free concerts that are organised in part thanks to BMW – together with great partners such as the Scala in Milan, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Opera, the Berlin Opera, even occasionally the Jazz Festival in Shanghai – allow for a sense of luxury to return to the society we successfully do business in. Ultimately, this initiative has to do with redefining luxury as something accessible. We want to provide people with the luxury of having an experience that on the one hand is brought to you by BMW, and on the other is still independent in the sense that BMW does not intervene between the art and the onlooker, the music and the listener. To be successful in this endeavour is to be a true corporate citizen, as such undertakings relate directly to the attitude and the character of a company.

The greatest definition of “brand” that I have ever heard comes from the 1960s, from John Hegarty, an ad agency executive in New York City: “A brand is a piece of real estate in somebody else's mind”. In that sense, our brand should not only be a fantastically designed car and maybe the garage around it, but the brand should also ensure that the piece of real estate has enough room for an opera house, for a gallery, for a museum and so on. I truly believe that this enriches what BMW stands for as a cultural brand. Of course, driving sales is also a part of this thought process alongside considering our company’s behaviour in a society. A firm cannot be considered as a corporate citizen if it only focuses on the bling bling, and if it jumps from event to event. Taking your time, it might take years to get noticed. However, engagement is really all about nurturing and cultivating your relationships with cultural institutions and artists. And when your company believes in that, you truly can make a difference in this regard. We consider BMW to be a cultured brand. No strings attached once you understand that we are not doing this for altruistic or philanthropic reasons alone; there are always questions of visibility, image, and reputation as well.

Drawing on your extensive experience working for a major corporation that is globally engaged in the arts, what particular knowledge do you think cultural policymakers could benefit from?

I would say that when it comes to audience development, it is essential to realise that audiences are more diverse, less affluent, and less educated. Without understanding this, these cultural institutions don’t have much of a future.

But cultural policymakers and arts organisations alike have been looking into audience development and cultural participation for years. In Switzerland, for example, the topic of cultural participation is a central axis of action for the federal government’s cultural policy agenda. There is still a long way to go regarding audience diversity. In your opinion, what knowledge can successful brands offer to diversify the insights on the subject?

Don't look at diversity as a sprint. Look at it as a marathon. The people in charge, such as myself, are trying to right the wrongs of 5,000 years of patriarchy, misanthropy and Western hegemony, which cannot be undone in an instant. This undertaking is based on your mindset and your openness. I truly believe that working in a global company where representatives from various places such as Asia, Africa, South America, and so on, come together in the same room, is a type of utopia, which cultural institutions limited to one place can only dream of. The famous German poet and philosopher Hölderlin ended one of his most important poems with Komm! ins Offene, Freund: “Open it up, my friends!” This may require courage for some, which often comes along with some self-recognition.

So, I would also say, let’s get off the high horse! Acknowledge that you are not only part of the solution but also part of the problem. Consider what institution you are giving public budget to. Think about that institution as not being about something, but for someone. This requires a high level of reflection. Finally, you need to scrutinise your cultural organisation as if it were a brand. You need to know your vision and consider both internal and external opinion. Only by making that change in perception can you compete. You might even get ahead in the attention competition. Because whether you like it or not, there is a competition for attention going on. Therefore, consider everything that your company is doing, including in terms of narratives, in terms of storytelling, in terms of key images and in terms of key moving images. This is not an easy endeavour, but I believe in the importance of this little exercise that comes with the business case attached. It’s never been easy to get the word out to new audiences and generations that otherwise might not have heard of you.

It’s also important to mention that collaborating with the arts is not about watering down what a cultural institution stands for. It’s not about reducing the complexity of an opera, of a dance, of a work of art. The focus lies in packaging the arts in a way that might be of interest to others, and not only those that are already involved. In other words, don’t only preach to the converts. This is something I would love to tell every policymaker.

There are two thoughts we have already discussed that I would like to come back to: Firstly, the expectation that when the public sector is withdrawing its funding, companies should close the funding gap; and secondly, that the arts strive even in times of crisis because it leads to a lasting reflection about post-pandemic developments in the arts and culture. A lot of media and scholarly attention has been given to identifying trends such as digitalisation. My question is whether we can talk about global post-pandemic trends?

I believe it was Yuval Noah Harari who said in an essay that either we come out of this pandemic in nationalist isolation or in international solidarity. Arundhati Roy likened the pandemic to a portal through which we can travel with all our grievances and petty fights intact – or dare to build a better future together. Of course, these are both bold statements to make, but it was Chris Dercon, president of dozens of museums across France who said that the pandemic has turned all our cultural institutions into national institutions because there are no more tourists. Yes, these institutions were closed for most of the pandemic. However, they had to rearrange themselves and consider their more immediate surroundings instead of thinking of themselves within global structures. I don't want to discuss the socialist term solidarity here, but I believe that Harari has a point. I would like to think of alliances instead. And when I think of alliances, I believe that the cultural sector comes out of this situation stronger than before.

Considering the trends you mentioned, digitalisation has been given quite a jumpstart and is definitely here to stay. Interestingly, we had all the technology before, we just weren't using it properly or to this extent. Before the pandemic, the annual fundraising auction for the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich raised approximately one million euros per year. Now, they are making three million a year because they are hosting their auction online and they are attracting clients from Asia and the United States that bid on their artworks. Taking advantage of this opportunity is fantastic – even for artists, who often are not being paid enough. For most, the freebie culture of social media and the internet have not made things any better. Yet at the same time, you have OnlyFans, as well as platforms like GoFundMe or Patreon, that present whole new models of raising money for artists. So this is something where I think alliances come in, and this also between companies, which should share more of their know-how and of their network with cultural institutions. I’m happy to see all these things slowly developing.

Could you elaborate more on the knowledge that companies possess that artists and cultural organisations can benefit from as they forge new alliances with major corporate players in the years ahead?

Since the eighteenth century, at least in German-speaking countries, anything to do with money – or, God forbid, a business case – has been defined as being in opposition to the arts. The Frankfurt School may have rightly warned against the culture industry, and culture has always been positioned as something that resists the dominance of the market and businesses. Yet I do think, as important as it was and is, that this 200-year-old definition blinded us somewhat to the possibility of creating meaningful coalitions between partners at eye-level. Of course, partnerships about business and the arts are about a monetary transfer, that is a part of it, but it’s also about a dance. Do you want to dance the dance? And with whom do you want to dance? And these things take time. And when I talk about dance I’m back to the idea of the relationship, of the partnership between the cultural entity, be that an institution or an artist, and the company or the entity that does the funding. It would be remiss to only look at the budget. There's so much you can learn and take away from a global company. What do they do? What do they excel in? I see so much beauty in innovation, in engineering and in design. You would have to be completely ignorant of all the things that are happening and developing in order to not make use of them as an artist, to delve into what is new and strange as it is unknown. So, if you are curious about your potential partner, ask them. Everybody wants to be asked something. It’s the Socratic way of things. Your partner will be able to help you and vice versa. As a company you are often held back by crunching numbers at the end of the day, whereas artists tend to be more liberal in this regard and much more freewheeling. What I'm saying is that what I gather from artists and collaborating closely with them is that their thinking is often one step ahead. Therefore, we need to listen to their voices and try to catch up, not only when it comes to funding the arts, but also when it comes to our core business. Not necessarily to make it even more profitable, but to learn about how to position yourself as a company when it comes to being a desirable brand.

So this is how I think new alliances are giving rise to new trends in post-pandemic times. What do you think, Leticia? I would also love to hear your thoughts, because I think it can be very valuable for our interview to explore this further. So, I would love to ask you right now, Leticia, when we talk about the learnings for post-pandemic times, the cultural institutions and the discourse that you come in contact with and that you spend your time with, what are your takeaways here?

I am rather sceptical about drawing conclusions too quickly about the post-pandemic implications for the arts and cultural sector. But I have observed two emerging trends, which are related to the need for a paradigm change that has been accelerated and made more visible by the pandemic.

I believe that the pandemic has made apparent that the majority of the “projectification” and fragmentation of funding in the cultural sector, inherent to reforms in the context of new public management, is not sustainable. Therefore, I believe that we are not seeing a trend per se, but hopefully a shift to a realisation that funding practicesneed to be more sustainable if we want to “create meaning”. As you mentioned, it is a marathon, not a sprint. Therefore, we should be reconsidering the strong emphasis of funding at the project level, even though in some cases such as extremely innovative endeavours it might make sense.

Yes, I believe this refers not only to cultural institutions and corporations but also to public and private funding bodies. What else do you have in mind?

A last thought worth mentioning is the need for solidarity among the different actors of the arts and in the cultural sector, the need to find a unified voice to lobby for the arts, against the interest of other socially relevant systems, making the traditional silo mentality within and across the art genres as well as between high and lowbrow culture obsolete. What are your thoughts here?

I think that is important. I believe that cultural institutions often cannibalise each other fighting for the same sources of funding. They eye each other constantly and envy one another, particularly when their leaders cannot see past their bloated egos. This makes no sense at all because standing together makes you stronger. That is why collaborations are so important. So many companies are now doing the X between the names, for example Virgil Abloh X Mercedes or Madonna X Nike. These players have recognised the strength of partnering up to create something together. Consider the example of Arthur Jafa, who received the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennial. He is now considered a great contemporary video artist, but before that he was making advertisements. There is so much going on in terms of cross-branding, but also in terms of cross-disciplinary thinking that, again, we would really be making a huge mistake if we did not consider a more holistic approach.

This brings us to the matter of sustainability in arts organisations, an important topic for the sector’s survival and for ensuring that the arts remain relevant for future generations. In your opinion, what do we need to do to guarantee this?

We need to consider the notions of being proactive or reactive. Right now, we don't have the luxury of being reactive. We need to act. And while there is something to be said for short-term solutions, especially in times of a global pandemic, we need to factor in the long-term. While everyone always wants to create something entirely new and unheard of, it remains crucial to be open. I think we have defined this as an important denominator in our conversation. However, continuity is what ultimately sustains the cause. Continuity means safety of planning ahead and relying on what you already know. You don't always have to invent everything from scratch. We are all standing on the shoulders of giants. “Every future needs a past”, as Odo Marquardt once said. We must be aware that the cultural institutions, the cultural genres that we thrive in, have a history of hundreds if not thousands of years. But of course, to move forward, we must look into the rear-view mirror as if we were driving a car. Look back but also keep our hands on the wheel and look into the future and change with the times, because otherwise, we will become irrelevant.

That is a good thought to conclude our conversation with. I like the idea of cultural leaders at the steering wheel of vehicles of change. Thank you very much for your time and your insights, Thomas!