UBS Art Collection Launches UBS Art Gallery at Midtown New York Headquarters with Permanent Artworks and a "A History and a Moment" Exhibition

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May 20, 2019, 10:00 ET

The new UBS Art Gallery at 1285 Avenue of the Americas offers a forum to make works from the Collection available to the public, and will feature rotating special exhibitions alongside permanent installations by iconic artists Sarah Morris, Frank Stella, Fred Eversley, Howard Hodgkin and more.
Opening today, May 20, the first exhibition will feature highlights from UBS Art Collection's approximately 30,000 works, dating from the 1960s to the present day.

NEW YORK, May 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- UBS, the world's largest wealth manager, announced today that an exhibition of artwork spanning 60 years from the UBS Art Collection will commemorate the renovated public lobby space at UBS's headquarters in Midtown New York. The space, now called the UBS Art Gallery at 1285 Avenue of the Americas, will be inaugurated by A History and a Moment: Works from the UBS Art Collection, an exhibition that offers insights into the history and evolution of the Collection since the 1960s, featuring works by established artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and Cindy Sherman alongside recent acquisitions by Dinh Q. Lê and Xaviera Simmons.

Tom Naratil, Co-President Global Wealth Management and President Americas at UBS said: "The UBS Art Gallery offers us a new forum to publicly present works from the UBS Art Collection, one of the finest and most comprehensive corporate collections in the world. As a firm, we are passionate about collecting contemporary art, which we believe has the power to provide fresh insights, to provoke spirited debate, and to inspire change. We are excited to share our collection with New Yorkers and visitors from around the world."

Divided into two primary sections, the North and South Galleries, the UBS Art Gallery will feature up to four exhibitions per year in the South Gallery, allowing the Collection to showcase diverse artworks, with plans for a solo exhibition of work by Ed Ruscha in fall 2019. Beginning in 2020, the UBS Art Collection also plans to partner with external arts organizations, institutions and non-profits for additional programming.

A History and a Moment, located in the South Gallery, will showcase works from the Collection in a variety of media and styles, including photography, painting, mixed media, collage and works on paper. Touching on the major artistic movements and developments since the Collection began in the 1960s, the exhibition will include Abstract Expressionist Helen Frankenthaler, Cindy Sherman, Louise Lawler and Robert Longo of the Pictures Generation, a neo-expressionist painting by Carroll Dunham, and a Cecily Brown watercolor, among others.

Mary Rozell, Global Head UBS Art Collection, said: "The Art Collection has expanded over the decades alongside the growth of the firm, and now encompasses a wealth of works and artists representing cultures from around the world, including iconic art of the last half century and new acquisitions that express the impulses and preoccupations of the current moment. The guiding mission for the Collection is to capture the most significant artists and ideas to of our time, and we are proud to now have a dedicated gallery space to share that work with the public."

Throughout the lobby, permanent installations of large-scale works from the Collection will be on display. Among the works on view is a mixed-technique print by Howard Hodgkin; a parabolic lens by Light and Space artist Fred Eversley; a totem-like sculpture made from found items and craft materials by Mindy Shapero; an iconic text-based painting by Christopher Wool in his signature stencil style; a cut-out photograph inspired by Roy Lichtenstein's interiors by Jose Dávila, a life-size sculpture of a woman in black patinated bronze by Julian Opie; a minimalist sculpture by Eva Rothschild composed of triangles delicately tumbling to the floor from its plinth; and a polychromatic metal relief by Frank Stella from his Moby Dick series which originally hung in the PaineWebber offices on the 38th floor.

Works on display highlight the Collection's unique heritage, which includes important artist commissions and UBS's longstanding history of collaborating with living artists throughout their careers. Among them are Sarah Morris's redesign of a monumental wall painting, which is over 42 feet long and directly faces Avenue of the Americas, originally created as an on-site installation at a former UBS building in Zurich in 2001; and a chromo-kinetic sculpture by Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez that was once part of an architectural intervention in the Union Bank of Switzerland building in Zurich in 1975.

Many of the works on view featured in the recent publication UBS Art Collection: To Art its Freedom, which presents a visual essay that captures the essence of the Collection. The publication is the first major book on the Collection in over a decade and takes its name from the quotation above the entrance of the Secession Building in Vienna, "To Every Age its Art, to Art its Freedom", which captures the spirit of the UBS Art Collection.

SOURCE UBS