Baron Man Ullens de Schooten, the artwork collector and patron who cofounded Beijing’s Ullens Middle for Modern Artwork (UCCA) in 2007 together with his spouse Myriam Ullens, handed away on 19 April on the age 90.
Already a longtime avid collector, Ullens turned an enthusiastic supporter of Chinese language up to date artwork in its heady childhood within the Nineteen Eighties and 90s. He would go on to build up a famend assortment of Chinese language artwork, encompassing round 1,500 works by artists akin to Huang Yong Ping, Qiu Zhijie and Cao Fei.
The couple’s enthusiasm for supporting Chinese language up to date artwork led to the institution of their eponymous establishment in Beijing’s 798 artwork district, which within the mid-2000s was solely starting to determine itself as a cultural advanced. It opened with an exhibition of China’s seminal 1985 New Wave motion, that includes artists together with Wang Guangyi, Gu Dexin and Yu Youhan. Certainly one of China’s earliest non-public establishments, UCCA’s ambitions to outline the nation’s burgeoning up to date artwork scene would show to make it influential worldwide.
Man and Myriam Ullens, pictured in 2007 Picture: courtesy of UCCA Middle for Modern Artwork
“Man Ullens believed above all within the energy of artwork to complement lives and create connections throughout cultures,” stated Philip Tinari, the director and chief govt of UCCA, in a press release from the establishment. “By founding an artwork establishment in China, he put that perception into motion, doing one thing wildly unique and beneficiant. UCCA, which he conceived and nurtured by way of its first decade, has highlighted a whole bunch of artists, impressed thousands and thousands of holiday makers, and launched numerous careers. With gratitude, we keep in mind his kindness, ardour, and cosmopolitanism, as we stock ahead the venture that he started.”
The couple established UCCA as a kunsthalle, with their assortment held individually. In 2011 they auctioned off 195 works from their Chinese language up to date assortment in two gross sales at Sotheby’s Hong Kong. In 2016 the Ullenses introduced that UCCA was obtainable on the market, and in 2017 they transferred it to a gaggle of Chinese language patrons who renamed it the UCCA Middle for Modern Artwork and have expaned to areas in Qinhuangdao, Shanghai and Yixing.
A Belgian nationwide born in San Francisco in 1935, Man Ullens lived largely in Switzerland, and retired from his funding fund Artal in 2000. He and Myriam additionally established the Fondation Man & Miriam Ullens, the Ullens College Nepal and the Mimi Basis supporting most cancers sufferers. Man Ullens’s honors included the French Legion of Honour and the Belgian Order of Leopold II.
Myriam Ullens was an entrepreneur who created the Maison Ullens model in 2009. She was murdered in 2023 by Man’s son and her stepson Nicolas Ullens over an inheritance dispute.
“As one of many earliest worldwide collectors energetic in China, Ullens performed a pivotal function in supporting a technology of Chinese language artists and fostering international recognition of their work,” the UCCA assertion says. “UCCA remembers Man Ullens with the deepest respect and gratitude for his outstanding contributions, to UCCA, to the historical past of Chinese language up to date artwork, and to selling international cultural alternate. His legacy endures—within the establishments he based, the artists he championed, and within the communities he helped construct—and can proceed to form and encourage UCCA’s work and mission.”
