German-American collector Artur Walther has assembled what may be the world's largest and most important private collection of African photography, transforming from a Wall Street executive into a visionary curator who has brought global attention to underrepresented photographic traditions. His collection now influences major museum exhibitions across New York and beyond, establishing new standards for how contemporary African art is presented and understood.
Walther's journey into African photography began in 2005 through an ambitious collaboration at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York. Brian Wallis, then chief curator at ICP, approached Nigerian-born curator Okwui Enwezor about organizing an exhibition of contemporary photography from across the African continent. Despite Enwezor's initial skepticism about the project's scope, Wallis convinced him by promising adequate resources and time for extensive travel. Walther, who was an ICP trustee at the time, immediately volunteered to accompany Enwezor on a four-week journey across Africa.
This wasn't Walther's first international collecting adventure. A few years earlier, he had traveled extensively through China with ICP curator Christopher Phillips, an experience that expanded his collecting focus from German 20th-century photography to include conceptual works by post-Tiananmen Square Chinese artists. The Africa expedition with Enwezor proved equally transformative, sparking what would become his most significant collecting passion.
The African photography trip resulted in Enwezor's critically acclaimed 2006 ICP exhibition "Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography." New York Times critic Holland Cotter praised the show as "fantastic—stimulating, astringent, brimming with life." For Walther, this exhibition marked the beginning of his deep engagement with African photography, a field that would eventually dominate his collecting activities.
Walther's prescience as a collector has become increasingly evident in recent years. Currently, four major New York museum exhibitions feature photographers represented in his collection: the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "In and Out of the Studio: Photographic Portraits from West Africa" and its show of works by South African photographer Jo Ractliffe; the Grey Art Gallery and Japan Society's collaborative exhibition "For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968-1979"; and "Ocean of Images," an expanded edition of the Museum of Modern Art's annual New Photography show.
Born in Neu-Ulm, Germany, Walther attended Harvard Business School before establishing a successful career on Wall Street. In 1994, at age 55, he retired as a partner at Goldman Sachs. A few years later, he began taking photography classes at ICP, including a master class with renowned photographer Stephen Shore. This educational experience proved pivotal in shaping his understanding of photographic art and technique.
Walther's collecting journey began with German photography, particularly the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, known for their systematic documentation of vanishing industrial structures like water towers and blast furnaces. When he purchased one of their typologies, Walther developed a personal relationship with the artist couple. Through conversations with the Bechers, he learned about their influences, particularly the Neue Sachlichkeit photographers Karl Blossfeldt and August Sander. Works by Blossfeldt, Sander, additional Becher typologies, and pieces by Bernd Becher's students Thomas Struth and Thomas Ruff formed the original nucleus of Walther's collection.
During this period, Walther became increasingly involved with ICP's operations. In 1997, he became co-chair of the museum's newly formed exhibitions committee alongside Meryl Meltzer. This committee, composed of patrons who help develop and fund future exhibitions, operated in an unusually immersive way. According to Wallis, meetings would extend from late afternoon business sessions to studio visits and elaborate three- or four-hour dinners. Walther would personally taste food and wine in advance to ensure perfect experiences. These carefully orchestrated events proved highly effective for consensus-building and attracting new supporters to ICP's mission.
Under new curatorial leadership, including Christopher Phillips and Carol Squiers, ICP began expanding its global focus during the early 2000s. This expansion coincided with broader art world trends toward international perspectives, building on groundwork laid by exhibitions like Jean-Hubert Martin's controversial 1989 show "Magicians of the Earth" at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. However, while the 1990s had seen brief mainstream interest in non-Western art, these efforts were often overshadowed by the rise of international biennials and market-driven fashions for regional art movements.
ICP's global initiative gained momentum with the launch of its triennial in 2003, showcasing international art, followed by the 2004 exhibition "Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China," co-curated by Phillips and Wu Hung. Walther's hands-on approach to collecting led him to accompany Phillips to China to observe the selection process and understand the local art scene firsthand. Despite recognizing the quality and importance of the Chinese work, Walther initially refrained from purchasing during this trip, feeling unable to connect the conceptual work to his existing collection focused on German photography.
Following the success of the Chinese photography exhibition, ICP curators began exploring other regions for potential shows. This led to Enwezor's involvement, given his experience organizing innovative African art exhibitions, including "In/sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present" (1996) for the Guggenheim in New York and "The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994" (2002) for P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens.
The collaboration with Enwezor proved transformative for Walther's collecting practice. His journey across Africa opened his eyes to the incredible range and quality of photographic work being produced throughout the continent, particularly in countries like South Africa. According to Wallis, "Take someplace like South Africa, for example—it's unbelievable the range and quality of the photographic work produced there over the last 20 or 30 years."
In 2004, Walther began planning a dedicated space to display his growing collection. While he had exhibition space in Chelsea, he needed more room and was drawn back to his German roots due to family circumstances. Flying between New York and Ulm twice monthly for two years while caring for his terminally ill mother, he reconnected with his hometown. After his mother's death, he inherited three houses that he realized could serve as storage and exhibition spaces.
The Walther Collection complex in Burlafingen, on the outskirts of Ulm, consists of four modestly sized buildings: the White Box and the Green, Black, and Grey houses. Walther deliberately avoided creating an imposing structure that would dominate the neighborhood of single-family dwellings. Since 2010, he has mounted themed exhibitions organized by well-regarded outside curators, beginning with a three-year, three-part series on African photography accompanied by beautifully produced scholarly catalogues.
Wallis's first exhibition for The Walther Collection, "The Order of Things," opened in Burlafingen and examined how photographic series function as building blocks of knowledge about social structures. The show featured works ranging from Eadweard Muybridge's 19th-century motion studies to Richard Avedon's 1970s portraits of American political figures, exploring themes of representation and identity through the lens of serialized photography.
The collection operates as what Wallis describes as a "light-on-its-feet institution," with minimal bureaucracy enabling rapid decision-making and exhibition development. A satellite project space in New York presents exhibitions related to the larger shows in Germany, creating a transatlantic dialogue around the collection's themes and works.
Walther has planned exhibitions for the next four years across both locations. "The Lay of the Land," focusing on architecture by emerging African artists, opened in fall at the New York project space, with subsequent exhibitions exploring social networks and the body. In 2017, these artists will be featured in a major Ulm exhibition with an accompanying catalogue. Plans for 2018 include a Chinese art exhibition with catalogue, while 2019 will present a comprehensive history of vernacular photography including commercial, forensic, and ethnographic studies.
The collector's systematic approach reflects his evolution from businessman to curator and art historian. As Wallis observes, "The chronology we are talking about, what Artur is describing, is his own autodidactic training as a curator and an art historian. At the beginning, he was learning, learning, learning, first what things to acquire, then how to organize them, and then how to create a place to display them. But now he's completely on his own."
Currently, "Après Eden," a sampling of Walther's holdings curated by Revue Noir co-founder Simon Njami, is on view at La Maison Rouge, a private foundation in Paris. The exhibition showcases the breadth and depth of the collection, featuring works by artists including Jo Ractliffe, David Goldblatt, Samuel Fosso, Seydou Keïta, and Zanele Muholi, among others.
While Walther expresses interest in expanding into other regions, particularly Middle Eastern photography, he emphasizes the importance of achieving critical mass rather than making isolated acquisitions. "To do something as a one-off doesn't make sense to me," he explains. "Would I be interested in expanding into certain regions? Yes. But what I am trying to do is grow what we have."
Through his dedicated collecting, exhibition programming, and scholarly publishing, Walther has created unprecedented opportunities for audiences to engage with African photography at the highest level. His collection serves not only as a repository of important works but as a catalyst for broader recognition and understanding of African photographic traditions within the global art world.
