Iwan Wirth (born 1970) is a Swiss art dealer and the president and co-founder of
Hauser & Wirth, a
contemporary art gallery.
Life and career
Iwan Wirth was born in 1970 and spent his early life in
St. Gallen, Switzerland, where his father was an architect and his mother was a schoolteacher. Wirth opened a commercial gallery in 1986 at the age of sixteen, and began working as a private dealer in Zurich in 1990.
Hauser & Wirth
In 1992, Wirth opened the Hauser & Wirth gallery together with Manuela and Ursula, heirs to the Fust retail fortune.
[Dan Duray (17 January 2012)]
The Constant Gardener: Iwan Wirth’s Hauser & Wirth Gallery Will Open a 15,000-Plus-Square-Foot Space Downtown This Year
'' The New York Observer''.
Other activities
In addition to his commercial activities, Wirth holds a variety of advisory positions, including:
*
California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), member of the board of trustees (since 2016)
*
Swiss Institute Contemporary Art New York
Swiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York (SI) is an independent non-profit contemporary art organization founded in 1986. SI is located at 38 St Marks Pl, the corner of Second Avenue and St Marks Place in the East Village neighborhood of Manhatt ...
, member of the board of trustees (since 2016)
*
Maria Lassnig Foundation, member of the board of trustees (since 2015)
*
Royal Academy of Arts
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpo ...
, member of the board of trustees (since 2014)
*
Serpentine Gallery
The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Central London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Gallery, ...
, member of the council
*
Tate, member of the South Asian Acquisitions Committee
From 1998 until 2009, Wirth and
David Zwirner
David Zwirner (born October 23, 1964) is a German art dealer and owner of the David Zwirner Gallery in New York City, London, Hong Kong, and Paris.
Early life and education
Zwirner was born in Cologne, West Germany. The son of art dealer Rudo ...
operated Zwirner & Wirth, which focused on private sales, in New York.
In 2014, Wirth opened an arts complex in
Bruton, Somerset, which includes the Roth Bar & Grill restaurant and a guesthouse hotel in the Durslade Farmhouse. The public garden is designed by
Piet Oudolf.
He later purchased a hotel in
Braemar
Braemar is a village in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, around west of Aberdeen in the Highlands. It is the closest significantly-sized settlement to the upper course of the River Dee sitting at an elevation of .
The Gaelic ''Bràigh Mhàrr'' prop ...
, in
Aberdeenshire
Aberdeenshire ( sco, Aiberdeenshire; gd, Siorrachd Obar Dheathain) is one of the 32 Subdivisions of Scotland#council areas of Scotland, council areas of Scotland.
It takes its name from the County of Aberdeen which has substantially differe ...
in Scotland. He is also part-owner of 'Manuela', a restaurant at the Hauser Wirth & Schimmel arts complex in Los Angeles.
Recognition
In 2015, Iwan Wirth and Manuela Hauser were ranked number one on ''
ArtReviews list of 'most powerful and influential figures in the art world'. In 2012, Wirth and his wife endowed a senior lecturer position in modern and contemporary Asian art for the
Courtauld Institute of Art in London. In 2015, both were awarded
honorary doctorates by
Bath Spa University.
Iwan and Manuela Wirth were named one of the 'Top 50 Philanthropists of 2019' by Town & Country, after founding Hauser & Wirth Institute and donating $1 million to Cal State LA through a partnership with Hauser & Wirth.
Personal life
Iwan Wirth married Manuela Hauser, a former teacher, in 1996.
They have four children.
They lived in Zurich until 2005, when the family moved to London's
Holland Park
Holland Park is an area of Kensington, on the western edge of Central London, that contains a street and public park of the same name. It has no official boundaries but is roughly bounded by Kensington High Street to the south, Holland Road ...
. In 2007, the family made
Somerset their primary residence.
[ They maintain apartments in London and New York]Luis Laplace
Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archaic ...
.[Maximilíano Durón (13 June 2019)]
Hauser & Wirth Will Open Exhibition Space, Residency Program on Menorca’s Isla del Rey
'' ARTnews''.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wirth, Iwan
1970 births
Living people
Swiss art dealers
21st-century Swiss businesspeople
People from the canton of St. Gallen