Man Ullens, a Belgian billionaire who constructed up one of the vital necessary collections of Chinese language modern artwork on this planet, has died at 90. The information was introduced on social media by the UCCA Heart for Up to date Artwork in Beijing, which Ullens had cofounded. The museum didn’t present a trigger.
“As one of many earliest worldwide collectors to champion Chinese language artists, Ullens helped carry international recognition to Chinese language artists and their work,” the UCCA stated on Instagram. “His devoted efforts additionally formed the muse for UCCA’s development into the establishment we’re right now, in China and globally. … We bear in mind him with deep respect and gratitude. 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.”
Associated Articles
Ullens started gathering artwork within the Nineteen Sixties “with a deal with new territories and pioneer artists,” in response to his eponymous basis’s web site. However when he first began doing enterprise in China in 1984, his gathering pursuits took a flip that might in the end outline his legacy.
Initially, he started shopping for Chinese language antiquities, together with scroll work from the Tune, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. That led him to fulfill Chinese language modern artists like Ai Weiwei at a second when the scene was considerably increasing, as Ullens instructed the Wall Road Journal in 2013.
Together with his late spouse Myriam, Ullens would go on to purchase necessary works by Liu Xiaodong, Liu Wei, Zeng Fanzhi, Huang Yong Ping, Wang Keping, and extra, typically for comparatively low costs. His assortment would ultimately comprise between 1,500 and a pair of,000 works, with a lot of it saved in Geneva. The couple ranked on the ARTnews Prime 200 Collectors checklist every year between 2008 and 2015.
In 2007, the couple established the Ullens Heart for Up to date Artwork in Beijing’s 798 Artwork Zone as a personal museum for his or her assortment. The establishment might be partially credited with setting off a wave of personal museums that sprung up in China within the decade that adopted.
The Ullenses sought a purchaser for his or her museum in 2016, promoting it to Chinese language traders in 2017. The establishment was then renamed the UCCA Heart for Up to date Artwork.
Along with supporting artists, Ullens additionally helped set up a secondary marketplace for Chinese language modern artwork, promoting works from the gathering over time, together with in 2017, when when he and his spouse auctioned off 50 works. One such consignment, Zeng’s The Final Supper, bought for $23.3 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in 2013, setting the public sale file for modern Asian artwork on the time. The rationale they gave: to purchase extra artwork.
“Our job as collectors is to advertise younger artists,” Ullens instructed the Journal. “I need my artwork to provide me goose bumps. After I get them, I do know it’s one thing good.”
Man François Edouard Marie Ullens de Schooten Whettnall was born on January 31, 1935, in San Francisco to Baron Jean Ullens and Baroness Marie Thérèse Ullens, who served as diplomats within the US on the time. Each got here from noble Belgian households. The Ullens household was ennobled in 1693 by Charles II of Spain, when Belgium was beneath Spanish rule, in accordance to Politico.
After incomes a regulation diploma and an MBA from Stanford College, Man Ullens joined his household enterprise Raffinerie Tirlemontoise, which centered on beet sugar refinery. He was instrumental within the firm’s operations increasing to Asia within the Eighties. In 1989, it bought to a German firm.
Shortly afterward, within the early ’90s, Ullens met Myriam when she was in search of traders to broaden her pastry enterprise. One potential investor was Ullens. She recalled experiencing a “coup de foudre,” telling Madame Figaro in 2014, “He’s my Pygmalion, the person whom I like and who made me escape of my shell.”
On the time, Man was married with 4 youngsters, and Myriam had two youngsters of her personal. Man divorced his first spouse, and he and Myriam married in 1999. Round this time, Artal, one other Ullens-owned firm, acquired Weight Watchers for $735 million. Man would in the end retire from the enterprise in 2000, primarily to deal with his gathering and philanthropy. By this level, Myriam had already bought her pastry enterprise, later launching a luxurious style model, Masion Ullens, in 2009.
By 2007, forward of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, they’d open the UCCA. The establishment’s first exhibition, “’85 New Wave: The Start of Chinese language Up to date Artwork,” helped set up a canon for artwork from this era and relied totally on the Ullenss holdings.
In 2023, Myriam was murdered exterior the couple’s dwelling close to Brussels. Her stepson Nicolas Ullens introduced himself to the Belgian authorities and confessed to the killing, in accordance to the New York Instances. Myriam was discovered lifeless in a Volkswagen, with Man subsequent to her, his legs wounded. Nicolas reportedly fired six photographs on the two. A month later, Man filed a civil go well with towards his son. Nicolas has denied that the homicide was premeditated.
The reason for the slaying was broadly reported within the Belgian press to must do with an inheritance dispute. Nicolas was launched beneath home arrest after spending six months in jail, in response to Politico; he’s nonetheless awaiting a trial that’s estimated to start out in 2026.
In reflecting on his gathering practices specializing in Chinese language modern artists, in a 2018 interview with the Asian Artwork Newspaper, Man stated, “We had been those who occurred to help them and we began to amass work. We had been pushed by sheer enthusiasm!”
