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Iwan Wirth
Swiss art dealer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Iwan Wirth (born 1970) is a Swiss art dealer and the president and co-founder of Hauser & Wirth, a contemporary art gallery.[2]
Life and career
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Iwan Wirth was born in 1970[2] and spent his early life in St. Gallen, Switzerland,[3] where his father was an architect and his mother was a schoolteacher.[4] Wirth opened a commercial gallery in 1986 at the age of sixteen,[5] and began working as a private dealer in Zurich in 1990.[6]
Hauser & Wirth
In 1992, Wirth opened the Hauser & Wirth gallery together with his wife Manuela and her mother Ursula, heirs to the Fust retail fortune.[7][8]
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)[9]
- Swiss Institute Contemporary Art New York, member of the board of trustees (since 2016)[10]
- Maria Lassnig Foundation, member of the board of trustees (since 2015)
- Royal Academy of Arts, member of the board of trustees (since 2014)[11]
- Serpentine Gallery, member of the council
- Tate, member of the South Asian Acquisitions Committee
From 1998 until 2009, Wirth and David Zwirner operated Zwirner & Wirth, which focused on private sales, in New York.[8]
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.[7] He later purchased a hotel in Braemar, in Aberdeenshire in Scotland.[12][13] He is also part-owner of 'Manuela', a restaurant at the Hauser Wirth & Schimmel arts complex in Los Angeles.[14]
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Recognition
In 2015, Iwan Wirth and Manuela Hauser were ranked number one on ArtReview's list of 'most powerful and influential figures in the art world'.[15][16] 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.[17] In 2015, both were awarded honorary doctorates by Bath Spa University.[18]
Iwan and Manuela Wirth were named one of the 'Top 50 Philanthropists of 2019' by Town & Country,[19] after founding Hauser & Wirth Institute[20] and donating $1 million to Cal State LA through a partnership with Hauser & Wirth.[21]
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Personal life
Iwan Wirth married Manuela Hauser, a former teacher, in 1996.[8] They have four children.[22]
They lived in Zurich until 2005, when the family moved to London's Holland Park. In 2007, the family made Somerset their primary residence.[7] They maintain apartments in London and New York[8] and a holiday home on Menorca's Isla del Rey, designed by Luis Laplace.[23]
References
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