Artist Sung Tieu has sold her work *Declaration of Donation* (2025) for €25,000 to fund a new board member at KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin. The work, a contract engraved on four A4-sized mirrors, stipulates that the proceeds cover the five-year term of curator and academic Mi You, whom Tieu nominated to the board. The sale directly challenges KW’s board structure, which requires a €5,000 annual fee from each member—a key revenue stream for the institution amid Berlin’s arts funding cuts. Tieu’s piece argues that such fees perpetuate exclusion and economic gatekeeping, and that institutional change requires structural shifts, not mere declarations of inclusivity.
This move matters because it uses the private art market to directly address diversity deficits in cultural leadership, turning a critique into actionable infrastructure. Tieu, who will represent Germany at the 2026 Venice Biennale, has a history of exposing exclusionary practices, as seen in her earlier disqualification from a memorial design competition for a Vietnamese contract worker. By embedding the sale’s terms into the artwork itself, she forces KW—and the broader art world—to confront how financial barriers limit board diversity. The appointment of Mi You, a curator specializing in art’s social and economic networks, signals a concrete step toward reshaping institutional governance from within.