A club, not a gallery.
We are a small organisation with a narrow purpose: to keep good art in the rooms of people who will actually look at it.
VivantHaus began with an uncomfortable observation. The art market is extraordinarily good at moving works between storage facilities and extraordinarily bad at putting them on walls. Value is preserved; the point is mislaid.
We wanted a structure where the ordinary act of living with a painting — noticing it on a Tuesday, tiring of it, missing it once it's gone — was the whole product rather than an afterthought to a transaction.
So we built a collection instead of a shop, and a membership instead of a checkout. Works are acquired by the club, catalogued, insured and placed with members. They circulate. They come back. They go out again, usually to someone who has been quietly waiting for them.
A member residence in Athens. Work on placement: Interval in Ochre, Matteo Ferrante.
Not a rental service
Rental is a transaction with a return date. Membership is a relationship with a collection — one that includes the right to keep what you love permanently.
Not a marketplace
There is no browse-and-buy funnel here, no bidding, no urgency banners. Acquisition is possible, but it is a conversation, not a checkout.
Not a gallery
Galleries represent artists to buyers. We hold a collection on behalf of members and pay artists directly for the works in it.
Not an investment vehicle
We do not sell art as an asset class or make claims about returns. Works may appreciate. That is not what the membership is for.
The house
Curators, registrars, conservators and one very patient logistics team.
Clara Vandenberg
Fifteen years placing works for private collections in Antwerp and Vienna. Started VivantHaus after counting how many of them were in storage.
Tomás Rey
Formerly of a Madrid kunsthalle. Believes a shortlist of three with reasons beats a catalogue of three hundred without.
Hanne Lauritzen
Trained in paper conservation in Copenhagen. Writes the condition reports, and is the reason nothing has been lost.
Come and see what we hold.
The collection is viewable in full by members. A selection is published openly, and we are glad to show more in person.