Contributors: Josh Ginsburg, Sara De Beer, Khanya Mashabela
On 4 April 2025, the BMW Young Collectors Co. members were invited Inside the Institution to meet curator and BMW Young Collectors Co. ambassador, Josh Ginsburg.
Josh Ginsburg is the director of A4 Arts Foundation, a not-for-profit laboratory for the arts in Cape Town South Africa, and a curatorial advisor to Wendy Fisher’s private collection (2012 – present). A4 is concerned with the ecology of artistic practice and its products; its well-being, care, and preservation; and exploring ways in which art as both process and practice is rendered legible and interpretable. A4 offers both a framework and an environment for working with art and artists and seeks to activate the potential of art outside the discipline. Habitability, mutual support, and serious play are key values. There, members had the opportunity to deepen their capacity of patronage and its potential impact for the public.
Key outcomes of day’s programme included:
1. Exploring how institutions can influence art production and presentation.
2. Engaging with A4 as a resource that facilitates access.
3. Understanding the role of the institution in maintaining conversations that shape the future of art.
4. Reflecting on how institutions shape our understanding of art history and contemporary African art.
5. Seeing the institution as a space that fosters conversation between artists, collectors, and audiences.
What emerged from this meeting with A4 Arts Foundation was not simply a deeper understanding of the institution’s internal workings, but a provocation: how might young collectors rethink their role within the broader ecology of the art world? At A4, art is not reduced to object or asset—it is seen as a living practice embedded in time, community, and inquiry. For the BMW Young Collectors Co., this encounter foregrounded the idea that collecting is not just a transaction, but a form of cultural participation with lasting consequences.
One of the key takeaways from the day was the way institutions such as A4 actively shape the conditions under which art is produced and experienced. Unlike market-driven environments, where artistic output is often tailored to trends or valuation, A4 creates space for research, process, and risk. Here, value is not determined by saleability, but by the integrity of thought, the quality of engagement, and the potential to open new lines of inquiry. For young collectors, this insight presents a challenge and an opportunity: to support artists at all stages of development, and to consider collecting not only in terms of finished works but also in terms of supporting the ecosystems that make art possible.
A4’s role as a resource—offering public programming, studio space, a library, and exhibition opportunities—further underscored how institutions can serve as vital access points for artists, audiences, and patrons alike. Importantly, this access is not only spatial but intellectual and emotional. The Foundation cultivates an environment in which complexity is welcomed, rather than simplified. This has implications for collectors: the act of collecting becomes not only a matter of selection, but of study. It demands that one remains attentive to the context of a work’s production, to the networks of care that support its existence, and to the potential responsibilities that accompany its acquisition.
Perhaps most strikingly, A4’s curatorial ethos places conversation at the centre of its work. Art is understood not as a static object but as a node in an ongoing dialogue—between artists and audiences, between past and future, between local practices and global contexts. This framing repositions collectors as interlocutors. Rather than passive recipients or gatekeepers, collectors become participants in shaping the meanings and legacies of the works they support. For members of the BMW Young Collectors Co., this perspective encourages a more dialogic and reciprocal mode of collecting—one that is rooted in curiosity, humility, and sustained engagement.
This ethos of exchange is also reflected in how A4 approaches the archive. Its exhibitions and programming often foreground forgotten or underrepresented histories, inviting viewers to consider how narratives of art—particularly in the African context—are constructed and transmitted. For emerging collectors, this offers an important lesson in historical awareness: that collecting is not only about the present moment, but about contributing to the ways future generations will understand and remember this one. To collect is, in a very real sense, to participate in the writing of art history.
Crucially, none of this is abstract. As Josh Ginsburg shared during the programme, the values that underpin A4’s work—habitability, mutual support, serious play—are actively practiced within the institution’s daily life. “Habitability” speaks to the ways spaces can invite presence and encourage longevity, both for artists and ideas. “Mutual support” recognises that art does not happen in isolation, but within networks of care and solidarity. And “serious play” holds open a space for joy, experimentation, and the unknown. Together, these principles offer an alternative model for how art institutions can function—and how collectors might align their own practices with these values.
By stepping inside the institution, BMW Young Collectors Co. members were not only given insight into A4’s operational logic—they were invited to consider how their own engagement with the arts might evolve. This was not a lesson in what to collect, but how to collect. Not a strategy for acquiring objects, but an ethos for building relationships—with artists, with institutions, and with the publics that art inevitably touches.
In an art world increasingly shaped by capital, acceleration, and spectacle, institutions like A4 Arts Foundation remind us that there is another way. They show that patronage can be principled, that collecting can be generative, and that institutions can be spaces of reflection as much as presentation. For young collectors, this encounter was an invitation to adopt a long view—one in which their role is not only to support what exists, but to imagine what could be..