Hauser & Wirth Art Gallery 542 W 22nd St

Hauser & Wirth 542 W 22nd St

Hauser & Wirth was founded in 1992 in Zurich by Iwan Wirth, Manuela Wirth and Ursula Hauser, who were joined in 2000 by Partner and President Marc Payot. A family business with a global outlook, Hauser & Wirth has expanded over the past 27 years to include outposts in Hong Kong, London, New York, Los Angeles, Somerset, Gstaad and St. Moritz. The gallery represents over 75 artists and estates who have been instrumental in shaping its identity over the past quarter century, and who are the inspiration for Hauser & Wirth’s diverse range of activities that engage with art, education, conservation and sustainability.

Hauser & Wirth has built a reputation for its dedication to artists and support of visionary artistic projects worldwide. In addition to presenting a dynamic schedule of exhibitions, the gallery collaborates with renowned curators to present museum quality surveys and invests considerable resources in new scholarship and research.

Since its earliest days, the gallery has mounted historically significant exhibitions. The inaugural exhibition in 1992 took place at Hauser & Wirth’s first gallery, located in the first-floor apartment of an Art Deco villa in the heart of Zurich; it united mobiles and gouaches by Alexander Calder with sculptures and paintings by Joan Miró. Since then, the gallery has continued to forge an academically rigorous, ambitious program of historic exhibitions, providing a natural home for a number of major 20th-century European and American artist estates, and encouraging a continued and engaging discourse around their oeuvres. These include Louise Bourgeois, The Estate of Philip Guston, The Eva Hesse Estate, Allan Kaprow Estate, Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, The Estate of Jason Rhoades, Dieter Roth Estate and The Estate of David Smith.

Iwan and Manuela Wirth co-founded Hauser & Wirth with Manuela’s mother, Ursula Hauser, in Zurich in 1992

In 2015 Iwan and Manuela were each awarded a Doctor of Letters (Hons) by Bath Spa University. In 2016, Iwan was appointed to the Board of Trustees at CalArts, California and the Swiss Institute, New York. He has served as a Trustee of the Royal Academy of Arts, London since 2014, and the Maria Lassnig Foundation. Iwan is a member of a number of committees including the Swiss Cultural Fund, the Frieze Masters selection committee, the Council of the Serpentine Gallery and the South Asian Acquisitions Committee at Tate. He was the 2007 Honoree at the Swiss Institute / Contemporary Art Benefit. Manuela is on the Board of The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh and a Trustee of The Royal Drawing School. Iwan and Manuela Wirth were jointly ranked as the number 1 most powerful and influential figures in the art world in ArtReview’s 2015 ‘Power 100.’

In addition to their duties as Presidents of Hauser & Wirth, Manuela and Iwan Wirth are also the co-founders of a hospitality business that encompasses the Roth Bar & Grill restaurant and Durslade Farmhouse in Somerset, Manuela restaurant in Los Angeles and The Fife Arms Hotel in Scotland.