In acquiring the art-historically important Ricke Collection in 2007, the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein and the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main were entering into a whole new field of innovative trans-border cooperation between museums. Although the collection is divided between three, in terms of possessive right, it remains intact as the partner museums will have equal access to the complete stocks.
The Ricke Collection is a unique collection of works of great artistic quality. It consists mainly of US American art since the 1960s, represented by trail-breaking artists such as Donald Judd (1929–1994), Richard Artschwager (1923–2013), Barry Le Va (1941–2021), Keith Sonnier (1941–2020) or Richard Serra (1939–2024). The collection is unique worldwide because of dense work groups that complement one another to an ideal degree.
The fact that the Collection was not broken up is due to a new concept and a unique collaboration between three museums. At the same time, the acquisition of the collection represents a new direction in classical museum activities, a considered focus on the needs of a collection, whereby a collaboration in partnership allows a private collection to be kept intact for the public and for coming generation despite narrow financial scope.