Albert M.A. Groot
Albert M.A. Groot, Director, and Founder, Collection G+W, Sittard, Netherlands. He has faithfully supported CIMAM since 2010. We are grateful not only for his generosity to CIMAM for over a decade but also for taking part in CIMAM’s initiatives such as the Annual Conference year after year.
We enjoyed and got inspired when reading his experience, view, and perceptions about art, artists, and museums. We are pleased to share with our members Albert M.A. Groot’s motivation and purpose in supporting the development of art and culture.
What is your activity's nature, and through what actions and projects are you linked to the world of culture and art?
From my early adolescence, I perceived that the most human and existential questions can be asked in Art.
In art, boundaries are examined on every level of existence.
So Art is for me not about esthetics only and certainly not about the value of commodity: it is about me and the people and the world surrounding me.
Through my work as a neuropsychiater I have always tried to understand by exploring, with the skills and means available to me, the existence that includes me.
In my work and in my relation to art, my interest helps to shape more than the accepted imagination of a common reality in the here and now.
It is this I try to share with the world around me.
What are your values, mission, and vision, and at what level does modern and contemporary art intervene as a channel or platform to communicate your value proposition?
The CIMAM-platform is so consistent with involved professionals in the art field, standing next to the world of the artists themselves, giving a guarantee for the possibility of excellent expertise, information and inspiration, by organizing intervision, supervision, education and research and of course intense contacts within the group.
CIMAM is one of the essential professional institutions for defending and preserving the role of art in society.
Art is harmless and vulnerable: not many institutions speak out for art.
What is your mission to support the art sector and contemporary art museums in particular, and what results would you like to see your contribution achieve in the future?
My support mission is to bring art to people who do not (yet) realize the possibilities of art to their lives, as a means of better understanding, as a means of comfort, as a means of self-realization, and means of communication.
Therefore I bring art in my everyday working space, ask people about their emotions and reactions, with regard to the art they are confronted with, and bring private collectors together, to open up their and mine collected artworks to the public (Art needs Public!).
In the last years, I am more involved in giving commissions to artists.
Also, I am very much interested in the field of educating artists through the Art Academy.
Recently I joined an initiative to help individuals in the art-world (also outside visual art), who are disqualified by authorities and media as well, with severe traumatization and loss of their position in the art world as a consequence.
I am thankful if my 'Sharing art-attitude' is understood and copied by bystanders.
That is rather more my hope than my ambition.