Francesca von Habsburg has a pharaonic vision of the role of the collector: as an enabler of greater-than-life art projects, through her foundation Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21). Unlike most of her peers she does not buy art, she commissions it, working together with artists that push boundaries and incorporate technology and science. For NOWNESS' new series Collectors, director Edward Housden captured von Habsburg in her exhibition space in Vienna, during Carsten Höller’s exhibition LEBEN, where she admitted: “There is too much art for art’s sake and not enough art for the sake of the world we live in and the things we’d like to change about it.”

Igor Ramírez García Peralta is Art-Editor-at-Large at NOWNESS.