Lempert Collection - Honey​,​ I Rearranged … — Part 1

Honey, I Rearranged the Collection… was the title given to an ambitious multi-part project presented at Culturgest in Lisbon, dedicated to the Lempert Collection — an extraordinary private collection of artists' and exhibition posters begun in the 1960s and comprising roughly 15,000 items. It was the first and most significant exhibition centred on this private collection, featuring posters by renowned artists such as Andy Warhol, Allan Kaprow, Jean Dubuffet, Claes Oldenburg, Richard Hamilton, Robert Rauschenberg, and Marcel Broodthaers, among many others. The Lempert Collection began in the early 1960s as a private passion. It was meticulously assembled over 50 years by a German collector and art enthusiast named Jochen Lempert (who shares the same name as the notable German biologist and photographer). The first chapter, launched in November 2014, was itself split into two consecutive parts. Chapter 1 ​/​ Part 1 — By Artist — opened on 1 November 2014 and ran until 15 March 2015, curated by Miguel Wandschneider. In this first part, the posters were organised by the artists who made them, inviting reflection on why so many artists — especially from the 1960s onwards — chose to produce their own exhibition posters rather than leaving this means of communication in the hands of designers, galleries, or institutions. The exhibition argued that, for many of these artists, posters were not solely governed by promotional function but formed an integral part of their œuvre, valued in themselves, often in defiance of the criteria of communicational effectiveness, making the collection as a whole a compelling journey through fifty years of art history.