Who are we?
Guy and Myriam Ullens de Schooten, Belgian philanthropists and collectors living in Switzerland, have initiated some thirty years ago an ambitious philanthropic action, founding for instance the Ullens School in Nepal, which looks after the education of thousands Nepalese children, from kindergarden until the gates of University.
Art lovers and entrepreneurs, the Ullens founded in 2007 the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art - UCCA - in Beijing. UCCA became the largest Contemporary art Museum in China and a worldwide reference in the art world. In 2016, to expand further the ambitions of UCCA (Two new antennas of UCCA yet: Beidaihe and Shanghai coming soon), Guy Ullens opened the capital of the museum to the major Asian Fund Lunar, though remaining a minor share holder and member of the board.
Settled in Orsières, Valais, the Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation manages today the artistic and philantropic activities of its founders, providing support to philanthropic actions, exhibitions, publications, art productions. The institution also manages the conservation and diffusion of a contemporary art collection rich of hundreds of major works, characterized by a universal focus (works from China, India, Europe, USA, Africa…) and a tropism for pioneer artists who invent or re-invent their art. A new chapter of this collection is dedicated to the Computing art, from the 1960’s until today, with already some hundred works.
Guy Ullens de Schooten
Guy Ullens is a Belgian citizen, born in 1935 in San Francisco, and living in Switzerland. After graduating from Leuven Law University and completing a MBA at Stanford, he ran a large industrial family group during some 40 years, transforming a local business into a large active investment fund worldwide named Artal. Since he retired from the business activities in 2000, he has been developing major philanthropic projects. Guy Ullens started collecting art in the 1960’s, with a focus on new territories and pioneer artists. He combined various collections before becoming in the 1990’s the pioneer of the discovery of the contemporary Chinese art scene, accumulating some 1500 works by young masters like Zeng Fanzhi or Huang Yong Ping.
Myriam Ullens de Schooten
His wife, Myriam Ullens, is a Couture entrepreneur running the luxury brand Maison-Ullens. A philanthropist born, Mimi Ullens initiated a large educative program in Nepal in 1993, Happy House Kathmandu, a mix of orphanages, intensive care units for poorly fed babies. In 2006, the Ullens launched in Kathmandu an advanced education center for primary and secondary schools which is today the leading educative structure in Nepal. In, 2005 Mimi Ullens, after going through cancer, started a large Foundation directly active in the cancer wards of 8 large hospitals (in Belgium, France and Switzerland).
Art lovers and entrepreneurs, the Ullens founded in 2007 the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art - UCCA - in Beijing. UCCA became the largest Contemporary art Museum in China and a worldwide reference in the art world. In 2016, to expand further the ambitions of UCCA, Guy Ullens opened the capital of the museum to the major Asian Fund Lunar, though remaining a minor share holder and member of the board. Today, Guy and Myriam Ullens, founders of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, are developing a new chapter of their collection life, dedicated to digital art. They want to promote what they consider the most important medium in the arts since the appearance of photography, through an ambitious program of production and diffusion support.
Jérôme Neutres
Jerome Neutres, PhD, a writer and curator, was born in France in 1970. After completing his studies in literature and semiology of the text and the image, he has been curating some forty art shows since 1996, among which the acclaimed digital exhibition “Artists & robots” at the Astana International Expo (2017), and in the Grand palais, Paris (2018). His researches focused mainly on pioneer artists and innovative forms and mediums of art. He has curated several exhibitions of photography (the retrospectives of Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, Robert Mapplethorpe…), and video (Bill Viola retrospective…).
He is also the author of numerous essays on art and literature history, such as Jean Genet, the Invisible object (1996), New Delhi New Wave (2007), Brancusi in New York (2013), and has published more than 150 articles in France and over the world. Former director for Strategy at the Réunion des musées nationaux-Grand palais, Paris, where he has been working 10 years, and former president of the Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, he has also served in an earlier career as Cultural Attaché of France successively in Spain, in India and in the USA. He focuses today on his independent art curations and productions. He is since 2019 the chief curator of the Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation, for which he is developing an ambitious comprehensive collection of digital art.