Over the last twenty years,’Thomas Olbricht has built up one of the most comprehensive collections of international contemporary art; with emphases on painting and photography, this collection inte- grates a wide range of media. In recent years, parts of the collection have been shown at Bremen’s Neues Museum Weserburg (2001) and Museum Morsbroich in Leverkusen (2005-06), while smaller presentations have taken place in Helsinki (2005) and Leipzig (beginning in 2003). In addition, several aspects of the collection have been presented at Museum Folkwang in the Moving Energies series (2003-06).

Showing around 280 works, Rockers Island is the largest presentation of the collection to date and yet only represents a small part of its holdings. For the first time the collector has chosen the works exhibited, curating the show himself at Folkwang.

Hartwig Fischer / Ute Eskildsen

Preface

Illustrations

Collecting and Seeing

Thomas Olbricht, Hartwig Fischer and Thomas Wagner

on the Combinatorics of Comprehension, the Collector and the Museum

Manfred Sommer

Collecting - On the Aesthetics of Preservation

Hans Hollander

Cabinets of Wonders: Outlines of an Unfinished Project

List of Exhibited Works

Biographical Notes