About Ursula Hauser
Ursula Hauser grew up in St. Gallen, Switzerland, where she co-founded and directed a family retail business. In the 1980's she began acquiring modern masters and developing an interest in contemporary art that burgeoned into a true passion.
In 1992, with her son-in-law Iwan Wirth and her daughter Manuela, Ursula founded the gallery Hauser & Wirth. Today, Ursula Hauser focuses primarily upon her collection, with its special emphasis on female artists. A committed cultural philanthropist, she is dedicated to sharing her collection with the public and is an active lender to exhibitions worldwide.
Over the last two decades, exhibitions dedicated to the Ursula Hauser Collection have been held at institutions across the globe. Through her dynamic engagement with artists, and her long-term support of their work through acquisitions, she has created a collection which is a unique resource for scholars and art professionals.
In 2014 Ursula Hauser received the SI Award / Swiss Institute in New York. In 2020 she was the recipient of the Rinascimento + Award (Florence, Italy) in recognition of her collection, patronage and commitment to supporting art and artists.
The artist comes first. Always.
—Ursula Hauser
In the 1980s, Ursula Hauser began quietly building what’s become one of the world’s most impressive private collections of modern and contemporary art — acquiring works from visionary artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Carol Rama, Alina Szapocznikow, Franz West, and many others — and in 1992, she co-founded one of today’s most important galleries, Hauser & Wirth. A book entitled ‘The Inner Mirror: Conversations with Ursula Hauser, Art Collector’ was published in 2019 and presents the first-ever extensive and intimate account of her life and art collection.
To define the works found in Ursula’s collection is a matter of identity, one that is fused to her personal trajectory — from her early years in eastern Switzerland, where she was born in 1939, to becoming a mother, helming her father’s intrepid electronics business, and starting an art gallery with her daughter and son-in-law. Family has always been the steady axis around which Ursula’s life orbits; for her, the artists she collects belong to that same magnetic locus. To understand Ursula Hauser’s collection is to know the collector and chart the course of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century art.
CURRENT collaboration
Ursula Hauser Collection is pleased to announce a collaboration with Zurich University of the Arts launched in the fall of 2021. NEST is an exhibition space of the Bachelor Fine Arts program that was initiated by the Department of Fine Arts at the Zurich University of the Arts in 2018 and is located in the building’s fine art studios. The exhibition space is designed to combine teaching with proactive exhibition programing and promote an ongoing exchange of ideas between students and alums of the Zurich University of the Arts and the international arts scene.
NEST EXHIBITION DATES
March 16 – April 13, 2023
Opening: March 16, 2023
For more information:
Zurich University of the Arts, NEST
NEWS
Roman Signer (*1938, Appenzell) has made a name for himself as an "artist of explosions". Yet this does not do justice to his wide-ranging work. Signer, who lives in St.Gallen, often also works with more subtle forces such as wind, water, and gravity. The installations he realizes are artistic experiments with ironic and sometimes poetic nuances. This exhibition, based on the donation from the Ursula Hauser Collection 2022, presents large-scale works that play with the element of water on a grand scale.
EXHIBITON DATES
September 9, 2023 – March 10, 2024
Past Exhibitions
The Wellbeing Summit, Museo de Arte Sacro, Bilbao, June 1 - 3, 2022
Collaboration Ursula Hauser Collection with Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland Fall 2021 – Winter 2022
Unconscious Landscape. Works from the Ursula Hauser Collection
Hauser & Wirth Somerset, United Kingdom
May 24 - September 8, 2019
Body Doubles
Lokremise, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland
February 4 - June 25, 2017
Paul McCarthy
Lokremise, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland
September 3 - November 13, 2016
Phyllida Barlow: mix
Lokremise, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland
August 21 - November 8, 2015
Human Capsules: Eight Female Artists from the Ursula Hauser Collection
Lokremise, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland
February 25 - August 12, 2012
Jason Rhoades. My Madinah. in pursuit of my ermitage...
Lokremise, Hauser & Wirth Collection, Switzerland
June 13 – September 12, 2004
Roman Signer
Lokremise, Hauser & Wirth Collection, Switzerland
May 11 – October 12, 2003
The House of Fiction
Lokremise, Hauser & Wirth Collection, Switzerland
May 5 – October 13, 2002
Wechselstrom
Lokremise, Hauser & Wirth Collection, Switzerland
May 13 – October 14, 2001
The Oldest Possible Memory
Lokremise, Hauser & Wirth Collection, Switzerland
May 14 – October 15, 2000
Paul McCarthy. Dimensions of the Mind: The Denial and the Desire in the Spectacle. Lokremise, Hauser & Wirth Collection, Switzerland
June 13 – October 10, 1999
PUBLICATIONS
The Inner Mirror. Conversations with Ursula Hauser, Art Collector. Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2019
Phyllida Barlow. Mix.
Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2016
Menschenzellen. Acht Künstlerinnen aus der Sammlung Ursula Hauser. Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2012
Ballerina in a Whirlpool.
Snoek Verlag, 2007
Swiss Made (The Art of Falling Apart).
Waanders Uitgevers, 2006
Roman Signer.
Hatje Cantz, 2004
(In Search of) The Perfect Lover.
Hatje Cantz, 2003
The House of Fiction.
Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2002
Wechselstrom.
Oktagon Verlag, 2001
The Oldest Possible Memory.
Oktagon Verlag, 2000
Paul McCarthy: Dimensions of the Mind. The Denial and the Desire in the Spectacle. Oktagon Verlag, 2000
