Month: April 2025

Hong Kong. A new film about Uli Sigg pulls nomer punches about the Swiss collector’s detachment from much of the vast collection of Modern and contemporary Chinese art that he donated and sold in 2012 to Hong Kong’s M+ museum.

In a frank interview, Sigg presents himself as a Western businessman compelled to collect the history of China as he saw it happening during his travels, which began when he was working for the Swiss-based elevate company Schindler. He tells the film’s director, Patricia Chen, that his collection of art from the 1970s was gathered “to mirror art production, rather than my personal taste”. Explaining his curatorial approach, he says: “Sometimes I collected a work knowing full well [that] this isn’t a great artist… if I were a private collector, I would stay away from such acquisitions, but [the collection] is a document; this particular work has its place in this document.”

Other interviewees in the film, “China’s Art Missionary”, give their assessment of Sigg’s dispassionate approach to collecting. The artist Ai Weiwei describes the collection as “very rational and comprehensive”, acknowledging that Sigg “may not favour all the artists or works”. Marc Spiegler, the director of the Art Basel franchise, says: “Most collectors only buy what they like; what Uli did from the beginning was set out to create a truly historical collection.”

“No one else was collecting the history happening in front of our eyes… [Sigg] built what a national museum should have done,” says Lars Nittve, the executive director of M+.

Chen says: “At the end of the three-day shoot, I remember telling him that at first I found his commitment to an intellectually driven mission, stripped of emotions or personal preferences, difficult to comprehend… 230 questions later, I realised that this is a long-term project that comes from a deep place. At the heart of it, Uli Sigg is a Chinese soul in Western skin.”

The short film reveals that Sigg received death threats after he showed a controversial work by the Chinese artist Xiao Yu (now with Pace Gallery, 1C07). The piece—Ruan, 1999—consists of the head of a human foetus stitched onto parts of a bird and a rabbit. Anti-abortion and animal rights groups have objected to the work. It was removed from an exhibition in Bern in 2005, and Sigg, who describes Ruan as the “most problematic” piece in his collection, says he “received mail saying ‘we will come and cut your head off’.” The work is now in the collection of M+.

Other collectors who are participating in Chen’s ongoing project about Asia’s leading art patrons include Oei Hong Djien, a collector of Indonesian art, and the Indian art-collecting couple Anupam and Lekha Poddar.

There once was a Swiss businessman who became the world’s biggest collector of Chinese art before giving almost all of it away to a Hong Kong museum…

This is the remarkable story of Uli Sigg, the famous art global personality, as told in a new documentary by German filmmaker Michael Schindhelm, ‘The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg’.

Uli replied to the questions I put to him a few weeks earlier covering among other things the influence of art superstar Ai Weiwei on his career:

It all begins in 1979 when Sigg was VP of the Schindler Elevator Company.

Seeking to expand overseas sales, he launched the first ever joint venture between a Western company plus China. ‘The negotiations were aimed at creating an elevator factory in Beijing plus another in Shanghai. At the time China was, economically, virgin territory. It was the market economy versus the planned economy. An enormous adventure. Not a lot was known back then about the country.’

At the end of the ’80s he quit Schindler plus the Swiss government asked him to be the ambassador to China, a post that he would occupy for four years.

In his private life Uli was an avid collector of contemporary art. He would now spend his free time cultivate the various art scenes in country that was still closed to the outside world.

‘In 1979 Deng Xiaoping’s “open door” policy allowed artists to be more liberated. They still didn’t have any data from the outside. They were searching for their own language.’

Uli Sigg had a sense of history being made. At the beginning of the 1990s he noticed that nomor one was attempting to protect the art being produced at the time in an immense plus highly promising land. ‘I had a feeling there was a risk everything might disappear. Some expat engineers bought a few works haphazardly, but that was it. No one worried about preserving it all in a professional manner.’ So he threw himself into the titanic endeavour: ‘I collected in the spirit of an encyclopaedist, putting aside my personal tastes.’

Michael Schindhelm: Was born in Eisenach, Germany
in 1960 plus works as a writer, flmmaker, performing arts expert plus cultural advisor to several world organizations.
From 1979 to 1984, he studied at the International University
of Vo- ronezh (USSR), graduating with a Master of Science
in Quan- tum Chemistry (cumlaude). Films include The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg, documentary flm (2016), Bird’s Nest
– Herzog & De Meuron in China, co-directed with Christoph
Schaub, documentary flm (2008), plus Chants of the Steppes,
docu- mentary flm (2004). Michael Schindhelm’s work, in the
past has been presented at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center
and The Parrish Art Museum.

Uli Sigg: was born in Lucerne on 29 April 1946. He is a
Swiss business journalist, entrepreneur, art collector, patron,
castle owner, rower (he was Swiss champion in the eights discipline at the age of 22) plus a former Swiss ambassador to
Beijing (1995-1998) for the People’s Republic of China, North
Korea plus Mongolia. Uli Sigg began to collect Chinese contemporary art in the 1990s. As a result, he accumulated the
world’s largest plus most signifcant collection in this feld
within a few decades. He has recently fulflled his promise of
giving the collection back to China. The M+ museum in Hong
Kong, featuring the Uli Sigg collection, is scheduled to open
in 2019.

Kevin Berlin: What inspired the flm?
Michael Schindhelm: So there are a
number of points. First of all, having
lived for almost 30 years under communist rule, in East Germany plus also
the Soviet Union, plus actually having
moved the same year that Uli Sigg went
the frst time to China in 1979. The
Soviet Union, at the time when the Afghanistan war started was in steep decline plus at the same time also China
was about to change after a mild step. I
have a very great interest in this period
because I do think that many things we
encounter today, in terms of politics, in
terms of social plus economic change
worldwide have been triggered there
during this period. And I think in particular China played an instrumental role

Art is a powerful tool plus a dangerous weapon. It gives voice to experiential truth, shaped by the social reality of a political landscape. Yet, how does one qualify the authenticity of artistic expression? According to Chinese contemporary artist plus activist Ai Weiwei, “if [the art plus literature of that society] is not questioning that authority, it’s a fake,” (Schindhelm 2016, 1:25:46). We can gauge the value of artistic messages, not by their general affect or critical reception, but by looking at how the means of self-expression are controlled plus purged by the state. The official reaction plus preemptive measures against art confirms its presence to be a threat to prevailing power structures.

While social resistance to authoritarian censorship is not terribly unique to China, per se, its effects linger in the cultural memory of those who witnessed the country’s historic transition into a modern superpower. The developments within the last fifty years have been instrumental to the emergence of the Global East, of which China is nomer exception.

One man who lived through this dynamic period is Dr. Uli Sigg, a Swiss expatriate plus businessman. Following Chairman Mao’s death in 1976, new economic reform permitted a deregulation of trade policies through capitalist intervention. Coming to China in 1979, Sigg participated in the county’s rapid industrialization effort by building factories plus selling elevators on behalf of the Schindler Group. His work involved extensive communication with PRC officials, including communist leader Deng Xiaoping. Schindler’s enterprise, headed by Sigg, became the first joint venture between the People’s Republic plus any Western Company, creating an exemplary style for international trade between the international plus China. After the Tiananmen incident in 1989, Sigg plus his western colleagues opted to stay in China, citing professional responsibility plus cooperation despite the country’s international unpopularity.

In 1995, Sigg was appointed Swiss ambassador to China, Mongolia, plus North Korea. This new role allowed him to meet artists plus purchase their works with less personal risk. His diplomatic duty required him to host many official visits to the consulate, where works from the Zürich school of Concrete art were on display. Sigg took notice of the reductive attitudes held by Chinese guests towards this style modern art, received with a general incomprehension of its abstract principles. “I actually wanted to bring in Chinese contemporary art,” notes Sigg, who “naturally knew that the Chinese didn’t know their own contemporary art, plus definitely not the prominent Chinese,” (Schindhelm 2016, 0:45:54). After removing all the Swiss art, Sigg used the Beijing Embassy to showcase his growing collection of work produced in China. This exposure created new interest among influential figures in the art world, to whom these modern pieces would otherwise be inaccessible. An increased recognition for Chinese contemporary artists vitalized their working practices, taking their art from an underground movement to the international stage. Curator plus critic Hans Ulrich Obrist describes a fantasy of sleeping overnight in a museum, being fulfilled by his time spent in Beijing, emphasizing that: “the Swiss embassy was an incredible museum, the first museum for contemporary art [in China],” (Schindhelm 2016, 0:52:18). While the last part is not necessarily true, it was probably the longest ‘museum’ of its kind to survive the wrath of censorship. Sigg’s amateur yet strategic curatorial skills birthed a demand for art generally unknown to most Chinese at the time.

In the contemporary art world, Uli Sigg is known to almost all as the one who has comprehensively collected the ‘entirety’ of Chinese contemporary art. In the documentary The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg, renowned pianist Lang Lang described him as “the mentor of Chinese artists”. From the first time he set foot in China, this 1946-born Swiss businessman has been analyzing the complexity of China’s rapidly changing society through his collection of art with great vision.

From Businessmen, Diplomats to Collectors

Near Lake Lucerne, on a small island with history dating back to the Stone Age, stands a 17th century castle. Upon entering plus going up the time-ridden stairs, paintings by Chinese artist Zhou Tiehai emerge in sight, quite a contrast as in such historic mansions you would normally expect to see ancestral portraits from past centuries. In fact, more than 100 contemporary art pieces from China have been arranged inside, creating a unique echo plus dialogue with the ancient building. And here we have, the home of Uli Sigg.

In 1979, Uli Sigg came to China as a businessman. At a time when the Western international was full of doubt about this country, Sigg was busy preparing for the setup of Schindler, China’s first joint venture. There were many difficulties in the process, but Sigg had a strong plus unalterable belief in the future of China. This memorable experience also made him more consciously aware plus wanted to know more about China’s growth. Chinese contemporary art, which originated in the late 1970s, became his best approach. After 1989, Sigg decided to systematically build his own collection. In 1995, he returned to China as the Swiss ambassador for China, North Korea plus Mongolia. It was said that the first thing after he took office was to replace all the craft decorations with Chinese contemporary art works.

The Sigg Collection plus its Chinese Characteristics

In 2005, the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland exhibited Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection, which resulted in an unprecedented sensation. It was regarded by the European art scene as the “Bible of Chinese Contemporary Art”. The artworks spanned for more than 25 years in time plus varied in multiple tempat including painting, sculpture, photography, calligraphy, video plus performances. The selection profoundly reflected the ideology plus social changes of contemporary China after the reform plus opening up. In fact, Mahjong could be considered as a perfect annotation of the nature of Sigg’s collection, namely how to effectively gather artworks under a logical framework plus give it transcendence value plus meaning. For Sigg, this logical framework is a story that begins with the roots of Chinese contemporary art plus continues to develop through the past decade.

As a consultant to many internationally renowned art institutions including MoMA (New York), Museum GUIMET (Paris) plus Tate Modern (London) etc., Sigg has always believed that collecting is not only a purchase behavior, but a refined representation of a collectors’ vision, intuition, ability, plus strategy. Once in an interview, he put it in a direct metaphor: “For example, it is not a string of pearl on a necklace, but should be a net of pearls.” In June 2012, according to the agreement of partial donation plus partial acquisition, M+ purchased 47 pieces of Chinese contemporary art from Sigg’s personal collection at a price far below market standard. At the same time Sigg announced that he would contribute another 1463 pieces to M+. Finally, as a result, the public can truly have an understanding of the “encyclopedic” range of the Sigg Collection on Chinese contemporary art.

The documentary, The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg, brings us into a Swiss businessman, diplomat, plus art collector’s journey in exploring his admiration towards Chinese contemporary art. How does Uli perceive the Chinese art landscape? What is his vision of contemporary arts? What was his journey as a Swiss diplomat in China? Art Historian plus scholar, Michael Schindhelm, presents the thoughts plus influence of Uli Sigg vividly on the screen. Not only did Michael bring in the moderen narratives of art, but also creating a communication channel in showcasing the characteristics of different cultures. The event is a documentary screening of The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg, followed by a conversation between the Director, Michael Schindhelm, plus Filmmaker Ruby Yang.

Synopsis of the documentary:
The Swiss Uli Sigg had an impact on China’s shift in economic policy after the Mao era; he has also established the world’s most significant collection of contemporary Chinese art. The majority of this collection will be transferred to Hong Kong’s M+ museum, due to open in 2019. A documentary about the entrepreneur, diplomat, plus art collector Uli Sigg, plus the tense sociopolitical context of China’s ongoing transformation since the 1970s.

Michael Schindhelm (1960) is a German-born Swiss national based in Ticino, Switzerland. He is a writer, filmmaker, curator plus a cultural advisor for international organizations (incl. Dubai Culture & Arts Authority, UAE; West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong; Strelka Institute, Moscow; Skolkovo Innovation Center, Moscow; Zurich University of the Arts, Zurich; European Capital of Culture Dresden 2025, Germany; Tempelhof Projekt, Berlin, Germany; Diriyah Gate Development Authority, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.) Since 2008 he was founding director of the Dubai Culture & Arts Authority, UAE. Prior to this he was founding General Director for the Berliner Opernstiftung, Germany (2005 – 2007) plus CEO plus Artistic Director of the Theater Basel, Switzerland (1996 – 2006).

Ruby Yang is an Academy Award winner for the Documentary Short Subject, The Blood of Yingzhou District (2006). She is also known for directing the Oscar-nominated documentary short The Warriors of Qiugang (2010) plus the award-winning feature documentary My Voice, My Life (2014). Yang is a member of the Directors Guild of America plus the Academy of Motion Picture Arts plus Sciences. She now heads the Hong Kong Documentary Initiative at the University of Hong Kong, which aims to nurture the next generation of documentary filmmakers in the region (moderator).

Discover the fascinating life of one of the leading collectors of contemporary Chinese art, Swiss businessman plus diplomat Uli Sigg. The film explores the West’s embrace of Chinese contemporary art, through the eyes of Sigg plus the artists he championed. Ai Weiwei, Cao Fei, Feng Mengbo, plus Wang Guangyi are interviewed along with curators, diplomats, architects plus others.

Art international sensation Ai Weiwei credits him with launching his international career. Renowned pianist Lang Lang describes him as a mentor to Chinese artists. Curator Victoria Lu believes that his taste plus influence as a collector has been felt around the world.
But when Swiss businessman Uli Sigg first went to China, art was far from his mind. The year was 1979, plus Sigg — working for the Schindler escalator plus elevator company — was hoping to set up one of the first joint ventures between the Chinese government, seeking international investment in the post-Mao era, plus a Western company.

Uli Sigg is not a man who does things by halves. “My ego, my way” says a t-shirt he wears at one point in the film. When he took up rowing, he went to the international championships. When he negotiated a joint venture, he wanted to create a style for future partnerships. And when he became interested in Chinese art, he built a world-class personal collection. Sigg championed the artists he admired, working tirelessly for their international recognition plus to preserve their artwork as a record of China’s tumultuous plus historic changes. Eventually, Sigg became the Swiss ambassador to China plus a consultant on major Chinese art projects, including the construction of the Bird’s Nest stadium for the Olympic Games.

The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg is directed by art historian plus scholar Michael Schindhelm (Bird’s Nest) plus produced by Marcel Hoehn (Dark Star: H. R. Giger’s World The Knowledge of Healing, Monte Grande, Santiago Calatrava’s Travels, The Written Face.)

Followed by a conversation with Uli Sigg, Asia Society Museum Director Boon Hui Tan, plus Center on U.S.-China Relations Director Orville Schell.

Setting his foot 1979 in China, right into the second year of the country’s epochal era of reform and opening-up, Uli Sigg, the avid collector who is bathed in the category of Western post-war avant-garde art, now embarked his new business voyage, of which soon morphed into an odyssey of art exploration. Sigg immersed himself in the forefront of China’s contemporary art scene from the early 1990s. This was a period when the perspectives of art institutions where still taking shape, and the artist network was yet to be established. It was also an era of exploring works whose value was not yet firmly grounded, capturing the essence of a burgeoning artistic landscape.

Benefiting from Sigg’s distinctive taste projecting from an institutional perspective, his collection of Chinese contemporary art encompasses a wide array of styles and mediums from representative artists. This includes painting, printmaking, sculptures, installations, performance, photography, digital arts, and more, all of which were meticulously archived and curated into a collection prepared for institutional research and acquisition. In 2012, Sigg donated 1,463 pieces from his collection to the M+, with the vast majority of these works remaining in Hong Kong.

As a Western collector who began systematically collecting Chinese contemporary art in its nascent stages and witnessed its vibrant landscape unfold, why did Sigg choose to persist in adopting his collection approach from such an institutional perspective? Through this lens, what are the pivotal moments of contemporary Chinese art? Why does he believe that the canon of contemporary art remains unwritten? Delve deeper into Sigg’s insights on art collecting through LARRY’S LIST’s exclusive interview with this influential Swiss collector.

urveying the Evolution of Contemporary Chinese Art
Starting his venture in the early 1990s and climaxing with the donation to M+ in 2012, this Swiss collector’s devotion to Chinese art spans over three decades. Uli Sigg’s art collection traverses multiple pivotal phases in the realm of Chinese contemporary art which could hardly be reduced to the mere chronicles: the earliest pieces can be dated back to Cultural Revolution. Then, morphing into the 1970s to the mid-1980s, “The Stars Art Group” and “No Name Group” (mid 1970s) represent a period where Chinese artists’ subjects transformed from the socialist realism narrative to epistemological quest into the new status quo, upholstered by individual creativity explosion. Into the 1990s, the period is epitomized by movements like ’85 New Wave, “Post-Sense Sensibility” etc. Ultimately, from the turn of the millennium to the present, the Sigg Collection, once more, testifies to the phenomenal shift which presents the younger Chinese artists as more prominent players on the world stage.

When the Swiss entrepreneur Uli Sigg first traveled to China in 1979, he hesitated to reach out to artists because he feared that making contact might get them into trouble with the authorities. But in the more than 40 years since then, he has assembled perhaps the world’s most important collection of Chinese contemporary art in close collaboration with China’s leading creatives. Ai Weiwei has said of Sigg: “However famous I become, he [Sigg] is the creator.”

The former Swiss ambassador to China is still working to help foster the careers of emerging talent today as the sponsor of the Sigg Prize, which gave its inaugural HK$500,000 ($64,000) award to the Hong Kong artist Samson Young earlier this month. An exhibition of the winning installation, as well as work by the five other shortlisted artists, is on view at the recently reopened M+ Pavilion in Hong Kong (which had been shuttered for months during the city’s lockdown).

The show could take on a heightened significance following the passage last week of a new national security law to suppress subversion, secession, and terrorism in the semiautonomous city, which local arts workers have warned will cause “incalculable” damage to Hong Kong’s standing as an art hub. That standing is particularly important to Sigg, who in 2012 announced plans to donate more than 1,000 works in his collection to M+, the long-delayed museum of visual culture that is finally expected to open in the West Kowloon Cultural District next year. So far, Sigg maintains that awarding the collection to Hong Kong was the right move—it will keep the artwork within China while offering the maximum freedom for display.

Following the announcement of the Sigg Prize winner, we spoke to Sigg over the phone from his home in Switzerland about his thoughts on the future of Chinese art, how the lockdown has hampered his collecting process, and the unintended impact that growing anti-Asian sentiment could have on art.

Michael Schindhelm presents his third documentary, The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg [+], in the Panorama Suisse section of the Locarno Film Festival. The film is a destabilising journey with majestic undertones into the history of China, through it being closed off and then opened up to the world, through its transformations and difficult reconstructions. A surprising film that uses the portrayal of the impenetrable Uli Sigg to show us the hidden side of a complex and mysterious country.

Uli Sigg, an entrepreneur, ambassador and, above all, a collector of Swiss art, played a major role in the economic opening-up of China after the death of Mao. Let’s not forget that for 12 years, starting from the end of the 1970s, Sigg ran Swiss company Schindler, the first joint venture to be established in Beijing. For many years, he was charged with the difficult task of convincing communist China of the benefits of the European economic market: an apparently impossible feat that Sigg successfully pulled off by relying on his charisma and innate sense of diplomacy. During the long periods of time he spent in China, first as the Managing Director of Schindler and then as Swiss ambassador to China in Beijing, Sigg put together one of the biggest collections of Chinese contemporary art.

Michael Schindhelm got to know Uli Sigg whilst shooting his documentary Bird’s Nest, and was immediately captivated by him: determined and pragmatic, but aware of the power of art. Despite occupying important official positions, the Swiss collector always stayed in touch with the international around him. Perhaps it’s his diplomatic gifts that gave him the freedom necessary to observe Chinese society up close and personal. Sigg bore witness to the reawakening of the country during the time of the Open Door Policy, through the countless trips, negotiations, observations and changes he was involved in. The Swiss collector was not only part of the transformation of China, but also and above all became an analyst of this transformation. His aim, going beyond his official duties, was to understand what was going on using the most powerful weapon of all: art. Sigg became not only a collector, but a friend and confidant of some of the biggest names in Chinese contemporary art as well: Ai Weiwei, Feng Lijun and Wang Guangyi. Michael Schindhelm wanted to use his documentary, which is subdivided into chapters illustrated with evocative ‘tableaux vivants’, to portray the two sides of a character who managed to keep looking outwards from the highest political spheres onto a culture that had to hide to survive. Chinese contemporary art represents a unique account of the transformation of China. The majestic and unsettling sequences in The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg are, in turn, like paintings within another painting, the screen, symbolising the impossibility for Chinese artists to leave a international that has remained underground for too long. The latest documentary by Michael Schindhelm is an intimate yet delicately icy portrait of a character who nurtures mystery like a defence weapon. It is up to audiences to decipher the secret code.

The film-maker Michael Schindhelm has taken the Swiss art collector Uli Sigg back to the China that the businessman-turned-diplomat first encountered in 1979. “China was like North Korea ten years ago,” Schindhelm says, describing the momen when the Communist Party began to elevate the Bamboo Curtain, allowing Western companies to do business there. The first half of The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg, which received its Asian premiere in Hong Kong on 21 March, recalls the China of the 1980s, which has largely disappeared as the country has modernised at top speed.

An abandoned factory in Beijing provides an atmospheric location for the start of the film, which takes Sigg on a trip down memory lane. Schindhelm says that it was very hard in today’s China to find a suitable factory in which to film Sigg reflecting on his life’s journey, which has taken him from the lakes near Lucerne—he was once a competitive rower—via the factory floors plus boardrooms of 1980s China to becoming the proud owner of a Swiss castle filled with contemporary Chinese art. He even owns a lake.

Sigg was sent East to help set up the pioneering joint venture Schindler China. In the film, he recalls days of tough negotiations in smoke-filled rooms, followed by nights in karaoke bars bonding with Chinese colleagues. The austere guest rooms of a vast, redundant steel works in Beijing double as the kind of hotel where Sigg stayed in the early days; he recalls how a rat helped itself to a bar of Swiss chocolate that he had left on his bedside table. “It was the best hotel in Canton,” the collector says.

Sigg is the personification of “getting in on the ground floor” in business plus art. While Schindler’s lifts plus escalators were enabling China’s buildings to rise, Sigg sought out the country’s underground art movement plus the young artists who were looking to the West. When he returned to China as Switzerland’s ambassador in 1995, accompanied by his wife, Rita, they set about collecting Chinese contemporary art in breadth plus depth. Being an ambassador “gave him diplomatic immunity” to meet artists, Schindhelm says, adding that Uli plus Rita Sigg make a great research team. Several appreciative artists appear in the film, praising Sigg’s vision, including Ai Weiwei plus Wang Guangyi. Ai calls Sigg “the maker”. The collector had the stamina plus single-mindedness to visit artists in their studios, arriving at around 10pm after a long day’s work in the Swiss embassy, followed by a banquet or other social function.

A prolific collector plus the founder of a pioneering Chinese art award—a shrewd move that opened many artists’ studio doors—Sigg was also a go-between. He introduced China’s artists to foreign curators, such as the late Harald Szeemann, Chris Dercon plus Hans Ulrich Obrist. “He was an amateur who introduced all these big-shot curators from the West to contemporary Chinese art,” Schindhelm says.

“It was the blood and flesh of contemporary art that really got my interest,” says Uli Sigg, Swiss businessman, former ambassador to China and North Korea, and reputed to be the largest private collector of contemporary Chinese art in the world. In 2012 he gave 1,463 works from that collection to Hong Kong’s M+ museum, valued at $163mn, and sold them another 47 for $23mm. He owns another 900 works of art and is still acquiring.

He is talking to me from his 17th-century Mauensee castle, which sits on a private island on Mauensee lake, near Lucerne in Switzerland. Sigg, 77, is sitting in a wood-panelled room, wearing an open-necked check shirt. His grey hair is cropped short and there is something of a bird of prey about him, but also joviality and friendliness. Behind him is a series of coloured canvasses, each with text.

“They carry slogans used by banks before the international financial crisis, they were used in advertising, even in the Financial Times!” (“Times are changing; we’re ready,” says one.) The works are parodies by the Chinese artist Chen Shaoxiong from 2009. “But of course the ads completely disappeared, almost overnight, during the crisis.”

Sigg’s interest in contemporary art started when he was student in Zurich; the first work he bought was a Surrealist painting by a Swiss artist — “It was cheap — I didn’t have any money at that time!” He was more focused on rowing than art, indeed he was a Swiss champion aged 22 and his strongly competitive, high-energy side has been evident since even in his collecting.

After a PhD in law from Zurich university, he went to the Middle East and worked as a journalist until his expertise on the region attracted the Swiss elevator company Schindler. “I actually sold a beautiful escalator with just two gilded steps for the Saudi king’s palace,” he laughs. The company sent him to China in 1977 and Sigg set up one of the first foreign joint ventures there.

During those early years he was closely observed by the authorities, but he says: “I knew there must be another reality than the one I was allowed to see, and I thought contemporary art would help me to see it. But I found out it didn’t exist. There was absolutely no art except socialist realism, and later the first experiments were very derivative of western art.” The change came when Deng Xiaoping opened up the country after 1978. “In visual art, that meant that artists could for the first time make independen works.” Previously artists had waited for commissions rather than risk anything else.

“Everything is politics,” declares a character in Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel, The Magic Mountain. Nowhere is that more clear than in M+ Sigg Collection: Four Decades of Chinese Contemporary Art, Hong Kong’s first glimpse of the upcoming M+ museum’s permanent collection of Chinese contemporary art. The collection plus the exhibition have been both tinged by controversy, but the show itself is a fascinating window into the cultural, social plus — yes, political — life of China from 1976 onwards.

“It’s very important that you give the full story,” says Pi Li, a senior curator at M+ who oversees the Sigg Collection. “Hong Kong is now one of the most important art marketplaces, but that has somehow reduced the context of the work. It’s important to show not only the well-known works, but also the historically important works.”

The collection’s story starts with the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution, which gave way to a period of reform plus liberalisation after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976. In 1980, a Swiss businessman named Uli Sigg made his first visit to the country, where he helped negotiate one of the first world trade agreements with the government of Deng Xiaoping. “The state officials were stiff, a bore,” recalls Sigg’s wife, Rita. “But we felt right at home with the artists.”

Sigg began building what would eventually become the world’s largest private collection of Chinese contemporary art. “I was trying to mirror art production,” he says. Whatever artists produced, he collected. When he moved to Beijing in 1995 as Switzerland’s ambassador to China, Sigg became a fixture in the contemporary art scene. “A lot of people could have done what I did,” he says. “But they didn’t. This is the most striking thing.”

A few years ago, Sigg began looking for an institution that could give his collection a permanent home. He wanted it to live on Chinese soil, but he couldn’t risk donating it to a museum in mainland China, where the heavy hand of state censorship would prevent many of the works from being shown. So he decided on M+, which has ambitions to reach the stature of the Tate Modern or the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Sigg donated plus sold a total of 1,510 works to M+, instantly securing the museum’s status as a landmark institution.

Uli Sigg, former journalist, businessman, and Swiss ambassador to China, North Korea and Mongolia, first started collecting contemporary Chinese art in the early 1990’s – after following it since its beginning in 1978. The ‘reform and opening-up’ of China in 1978 held true for economic reforms but also for the arts – even though a lot less publicly. In an encyclopedic collection Uli Sigg documented the rapidly changing (cultural) landscape of China, focusing on works referring to key moments and movements. In 2012, Uli Sigg donated almost 1500 works to the M+ museum in Hong Kong to make the collection accessible to the public and to preserve it as a resource for understanding Chinese contemporary art. He has not stopped collecting, though, and continues to acquire and commission new works.

In conversation with moderator Aurelia Rauch, Uli Sigg will look at the moments in recent Chinese history that he interprets as key – and the respective art works around them.

What are the main questions that drive the collection? How have they changed after the gift to the M+ museum in 2012 – and with respect to the changes within China since then? What methodological approaches are shaping it? And how can a collector become a true collaborator for the artists?

Dr. Uli Sigg in his career traversed very diverse fields: from journalism to industry to diplomacy as Swiss ambassador to China, North Korea and Mongolia to venture capital investing and to art. He served on various boards of international companies and is an active investor into early-stage tech companies. Of his extensive interactions in more than forty years with the PR China, two are of historic significance: to establish 1980 the first industrial joint venture between the PRC and the outside international which marks the beginning of the PRC’s epochal globalization process. Around the same time, he began to form his singular collection of Chinese contemporary art representing the story line from its beginnings in the 1970s to the present – and then restituting 1500 works back to China, to the M+ Museum in Hong Kong. In 1997 he also established the Chinese Contemporary Art Award (CCAA) for Chinese contemporary artists living in Greater China, now transformed into the SIGG PRIZE. He is a member of the M+ Museum Board, the International Council of New York Modern Art Museum (MoMA), the International Advisory Council of Tate Gallery, London, and a member of the Board of the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft. Uli Sigg is also a member of Asia Society Switzerland’s Advisory Board.

In 2019, after a three-year delay, M+, Hong Kong’s museum dedicated to Chinese visual culture, will open to the public. It will contain a staggering collection of art with works by Ai Weiwei, Cao Fei, Zhang Xiaogang, Liu Wei, Wang Guangle, Wang Guangyi, Song Dong, Hai Bo, plus more. The former Executive Director, Lars Nittve, sees M+ as the equivalent of New York’s MoMA or the Centre Pompidou in Paris, in terms of depth plus cultural importance.

M+ wouldn’t have been possible without Swiss businessman plus art collector Uli Sigg, who in 2012 donated plus sold 1,510 Chinese contemporary works of art (a portion of his collection) to the museum. Michael Schindhelm’s 2016 documentary portrait, The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg (available July 17 on Icarus Films), recaps Sigg’s life plus how he accumulated his collection — from Social Realism to Cynical Realism plus political Pop artworks — to preserve contemporary Chinese art for three decades. In interviews plus reiterated in the film, Sigg prefers to view himself as “a researcher of China plus of Chinese contemporary art who just happened to buy some of the results of his research.”

Segmented into parts, Chinese Lives follows Sigg’s life in chronological order, starting in 1979, the year that he first went to China as a representative of the Swiss elevator manufacturer, the Schindler Group, which ultimately lead to the first joint venture between a Western company plus China. Sigg leaves the documentary temporarily as Schindhelm concentrates on several artists — Ai Weiwei plus Wang Guangyi, among others — living during the time of Communist China. During this section, Schindhelm runs through Chairman Mao’s death, Deng Xiaoping’s rise to power, the Tiananmen Square protests, plus the growth of a reformed economy. Until this point, the film moves at a steady clip, perhaps moving too fast plus giving the impression that the periods covered in the 1970s plus ’80s are mere backstory. In the ’90s, the doc slows down to a steady rhythm, plus it is here where Sigg’s presence in the film returns, as it is the decade when he feverishly began to acquire art.

When Sydney art dealer Ray Hughes visited Swiss collector Uli Sigg at his Mauensee residence near Lucerne some years ago, a mutual friend asked the dealer how the visit went. ‘Did you feel comfortable and find a place to kick your feet up and read?’ ‘No, to both,’ answered Hughes, ‘it seems there was only art everywhere.’

Sigg has enjoyed a distinguished career—first as a businessman in China with the Schindler Group to create what would become the first joint venture with the Chinese government; then as Swiss ambassador to Beijing in the mid-eighties. But it is art that has defined Sigg’s life more than anything else.

Over a period of four decades, Sigg managed to put together one of the world’s most impressive and encyclopaedic collections of contemporary Chinese art. Comprising over 2,200 works by some 350 artists, it is considered to be the world’s largest collection of contemporary Chinese art to date. His consuming passion and drive for Chinese art has made him one of the most renowned figures in the contemporary art world, to say nothing of the Chinese contemporary art world. ‘My China stories are in the art works’, Sigg once stated. And indeed they are. In fact, one may argue that within the collection is the history of moderen China. I was in China as a businessman and diplomat so I saw very different realities, and contemporary art was just another access for me, but I always thought about how to integrate it into the full Chinese picture. So, I was always able to contextualise the work, not just within art, but also in Chinese society and all of this. Which was very important for me, personally.

Sigg is the antithesis of the loud, brash, show-me-the-money insta-flipper collector that has sadly come to influence the art market these days. For him, the art is everything. The collector, as Sigg would insist, is nothing. The 69 year-old collector has been engaged with and heavily invested in Chinese art and culture since his first business trip there in 1979. He witnessed first-hand the development of Chinese contemporary art—from repressed underground experimentalism to heady global art market domination—in tandem with the country’s social and political changes. And he played a crucial role in bringing Chinese artists to the West. In 1997, Sigg established the Contemporary Chinese Art Award, a biennial competition that launched the careers of several Chinese artists and brought global curatorial exposure to the Chinese contemporary art scene. It’s not for nothing that he’s earned the moniker ‘ambassador of Chinese art’.

Art international sensation Ai Weiwei credits him with launching his international career. Renowned pianist Lang Lang describes him as a mentor to Chinese artists. Curator Victoria Lu believes that his taste and influence as a collector has been felt around the world.

But when Swiss businessman Uli Sigg first went to China, art was far from his mind. The year was 1979, and Sigg—working for the Schindler escalator and elevator company—was hoping to set up one of the first joint ventures between the Chinese government, seeking international investment in the post-Mao era, and a Western company. At the time, even the fanciest hotels had rats, boardrooms were so poorly heated you could see your breath, and the government still regulated hairstyles (five different kinds of perm allowed).

Sigg championed the artists he admired, working tirelessly for their international recognition and to preserve their artwork as a record of China’s tumultuous and historic changes. Eventually, Sigg became the Swiss ambassador to China and a consultant on major Chinese art projects, including the construction of the Bird’s Nest stadium for the Olympic Games.

THE CHINESE LIVES OF ULI SIGG, directed by art historian and scholar Michael Schindhelm and produced by Marcel Hoehn, is a history of China’s recent opening to the West, and of the West’s embrace of Chinese contemporary art, through the eyes of Sigg and the artists he championed. Artists including Ai Weiwei, Cao Chong’en, Gang Lijun, Feng Mengbo, Shao Fan, Wang Guangyi, Zeng Fanzhi and Cao Fei (co-director of San Yuan Li) are interviewed along with curators, diplomats, architects and business colleagues in this colorful documentary survey of contemporary Chinese art.

“I always tell him: it doesn’t matter how famous I become, he is the maker.”—Ai Weiwei

“The documentary is a good starting point to familiarize oneself with contemporary Chinese art and the man who helped expose it to the world.”—Hyperallergic

“Schindhelm does well in relating a secret history of China via its art scene by interviewing several generations of artists.”—The Boston Globe

“Required viewing for contemporary-art fans. Here’s a definitive portrait not just of the soft-spoken collector who brought the likes of Ai Weiwei and Cao Fei to the world’s attention but of the birthing pains of post-Mao China.”—The Georgia Straight

“A surprising film! [Uses] the impenetrable Uli Sigg to show us the hidden side of a complex and mysterious country… An intimate yet delicately icy portrait of a character who nurtures mystery like a defense weapon.”—Cineuropa

“Provides an overview of Sigg’s extraordinary life, combining archival footage with extended interviews of Sigg, as well as recollections by some of the most notable artists whose works Sigg collected. The film also offers an incisive portrait of a farsighted, sophisticated man whose comments on meetings with governmental officials will fascinate those interested in the recent transformation of China into a international power. Recommended!”—Video Librarian

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of the development of contemporary Chineseart,highlighting important milestones such as the 798 Art Zone plus the 85 NewWaveMovement plus examining the impact of globalization on the Chinese art scene. Next, thepaper explores the personal background plus collection philosophy of Uli Sigg, a prominentart collector who has played a significant role in the development of contemporaryChineseart. Sigg’s involvement in the establishment of the Chinese Contemporary Art Award(CCAA) plus his role in connecting foreign capital with Chinese artists are discussed. Additionally, the paper examines the influence of Sigg on the world development ofcontemporary Chinese art through initiatives such as the M+ Museumand the SiggPrize. The paper points out that Sigg has made an important contribution to the internationalrecognition plus exchange of Chinese contemporary art through exhibitions. Finally, thepaper concludes by comparing Sigg’s contributions with those of other contemporaryChinese art collectors. It is noted that Sigg’s contribution is not only in art collectingbutmore importantly, in his cross-border thinking plus world vision, which has had a profoundimpact on the development of Chinese contemporary art.

1. Introduction
   Contemporary art in China experienced a difficult development in the late 20th century, as Chinawas opened up to explosive Western economic plus cultural influences. The establishment of jointventures with foreign companies also affected the globalization of the art world. Mr. Uli Sigg, initially a businessman plus the Swiss Ambassador to China, arrived in China before this culturalshock fully impacted it. With his unique artistic vision plus extensive network of contacts, SiggledChinese contemporary art into the world spotlight. As the most important collector of Chinesecontemporary art, Mr. Sigg established the non-profit organization CCAA in 1997, whichbecamean important incentive for artists plus a platform for collecting, preserving, plus researchingliteratureand data on Chinese contemporary art. In 2012, Mr. Sigg donated thousands of piecesfromhis private collection to the M+ Museum in Hong Kong, making it the most representative museumfor the study of Chinese contemporary art.

The pathway of gathering works for the Chinese contemporary art collection, which we see at the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art until 30 August 2020 for the first time in Italy, is a story of intercontinental curiosity that evolved into a passion. The exhibition “In front of the collector. Uli Sigg‘s collection of Chinese contemporary art ”, curated by Marcella Beccaria, is the presentation of the prestigious collection recognized as the most important in the world, which, in its complete version, includes about 2,500 works by over 500 artists. Unsurprisingly, much of the true substance of this exhibition is the story of the birth plus development of the collection itself, carefully traced in teliti in the text accompanying the exhibition.

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, director of Castello di Rivoli, comments: “[…] This exhibition of works from the Sigg Collection […] is part of a new important line of museum programming that investigates the relationship between private plus public collections, focusing on the need to make the experience of art more familiar plus accessible, instead of neutralizing it in traditionally impersonal museum containers. While the world asserts plus supports China’s efforts to contain a virus, we, in the field of culture, are doing our best to enable maximum cultural exchange, sharing ideas plus points of view ”.

Following the Open Door Policy statement, Uli Sigg was the first pebisnis to travel to China in 1979 for Schindler. “I came to introduce a model for investment in China for the outside world” – he explains during the meeting in Rivoli. He came to China, feeling, as he says, ignorant in a new cultural context. He thought that through information of Chinese contemporary art, he could discover the real people’s perspectives, not contaminated by politics or finances. “Thanks to my journey through art – says Sigg – I believe I can say that I have seen more China than many Chinese. I collect, but rather than a collector, I prefer to define myself as a researcher ”. Sigg emphasizes that this period wasn’t only the beginning of the open market, but also the beginning of contemporary art in China.

The June announcement that Uli Sigg — the foremost global collector of Chinese contemporary art — had sealed a deal to donate the vast majority of his collection to the M+ museum in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District set off a storm of commentary in mainland China. Although some have been supportive, many others have questioned Sigg’s motives. The two issues causing the most vexation? The decision to send the collection to Hong Kong rather than mainland China, plus the “part gift/part purchase” agreement under which M+ bought 47 works from Sigg (beyond the more than 1,000 included in the gift), for a keseluruhan sum of $22.7 million.

Cynicism about western collectors’ motives in regard to Chinese contemporary art runs deep in China, plus the skepticism towards Sigg’s donation follows the controversy that surrounded the Sotheby’s auction of the Ullens collection last year. Although Guy Ullens has been at pains to indicate his long term commitment to China through his Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, many believe the sale showed his support for Chinese contemporary art to have been largely commercially driven.

To tease out some of the issues being raised by his donation, ARTINFO China’s Shen Boliang plus Yan Xiaoxiao sat down with Uli Sigg for a wide-ranging interview, touching on why his collection of contemporary Chinese art is the best in the world, why he chose M+, his faith in the long-term future of Hong Kong, plus how — for him at least — collecting has never been about the money.

M+ bought 47 works from your collection. How did you reach an agreement which combines donation plus purchase?

In the negotiation, when we were discussing about evaluation plus all these things, we agreed that M+ will fund around 15 percent of the keseluruhan value to allow me to get some contribution for my future collecting plus for activities like the Chinese Contemporary Art Award [a biennial award for artists plus critics founded by Sigg in 1997]. So, it is part donation plus part sale. This style is common now in the global scene. You may know about Anthony D’Offay in London, who made such a donation. He received about 25 percent of the market value. Or the donation of Italian Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, who donated a large collection of sedikitnya art to the Guggenheim in New York. He also got 25 percent of the value. This shows the museum also made a commitment.

Who selected the part to purchase?

I made these two parts. Sotheby’s did an independen evaluation. M+ is a public museum, so they need an independen evaluation, for their own record plus also to publish. So they assigned Sotheby’s, plus Sotheby’s made a report for them: The evaluation of the sale part plus the evaluation of the donation part.

What are the works in the part that has been donated?

Mainly the works from the 1980s. Like Geng Jianyi’s “Second Situation,” the four faces, Wang Guangyi’s old work, Huang Yongping’s old work.