The foundation is named for Arthur Boskamp (1919-2000). Boskamp was working as director of the G. Pohl-Boskamp Company in the late 1950s, when he got a simple idea to design an ad for his company. From there, he would not only become a self-taught practitioner and enthusiast of poetry, drawing, painting and mixed media, but would also offer other artistically active pharmacists and doctors a forum for their work, initially at the “galerie boskamp” in Hamburg and later at the “Kunsthaus Boskamp” (Boskamp Art Center) in Hohenlockstedt (located in the historic M.1 building). He furthermore mass-distributed his artwork in the form of an annual calendar published from 1968 to 1999.

Beyond that, he was variously active in culture and (local) politics, including in the renaming of the town Hohenlockstedt, in the founding years of the Green Party and in founding the library in Hohenlockstedt, to name a few examples.

After Arthur Boskamp’s death, his daughters funneled a portion of his estate into the non-profit Arthur Boskamp Foundation, which fosters curatorial, artistic and art-educational work in his tradition, and today primarily sponsors the three ongoing programs at M.1, manages his artistic estate and maintains the historic M.1 building.