UBS names Mary Rozell Global Head of the UBS Art Collection
- ZURICH, Switzerland
- /
- June 10, 2015
Global financial services company UBS today announced that international art collection specialist, art historian, and lawyer Mary Rozell has been appointed as the Global Head of the UBS Art Collection, beginning in September 2015. She replaces Irene Zortea, who will retire at the end of September.
For the last six years, Rozell has been the Director of the Art Business program at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York, as well as a private art collection consultant. She is the author of The Art Collector’s Handbook, published by Lund Humphries in 2014.
In her new role at the UBS Art Collection, Rozell will oversee a global team including Jacqueline Lewis, Curator for the Americas, and Stephen McCoubrey, Curator for the UK, Europe and Asia Pacific. The team of art experts oversees the acquisitions, exhibitions and overall management of the corporate collection.
The UBS Art Collection is widely recognized as one of the most important corporate collections of contemporary art in the world, with more than 30,000 artworks spanning the last 50 years by emerging and established artists. UBS’s collection is at the heart of the company’s longstanding, global support of contemporary art. Works from the collection are on view in roughly 837 UBS locations in 56 countries around the world and shared with the public through exhibitions and loans.
President of Wealth Management Jürg Zeltner states: “We are delighted to have Mary Rozell leading the UBS Art Collection team. Her broad range of experience complements the many ways UBS is involved in the arts. We believe that collecting contemporary art brings innovative thinking and fresh perspectives into our offices every day. We look forward to working with Mary and her team to make the UBS Art Collection even more relevant in the future."
"I am thrilled to take on the challenge of developing and managing such an esteemed collection," states Rozell. "UBS's sustained commitment to art through all of its activities is unique and offers a broad platform for engagement in the art world. I look forward to working with the talented curators and art professionals as stewards of the UBS Art Collection."
Mary Rozell has been an advisor to collectors, artists and estates on legal and strategic issues relating to the acquisition, management and deaccessioning of private art collections. An art lawyer with a master’s degree in modern art from The Courtauld, she was until recently the Director of Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art – New York. Rozell has also served as the director and/or consultant to several major private art collections, as well as Managing Director of the Swiss Institute – Contemporary Art in New York and Curator/Director of the European Studio Programme for the ACC Galerie in the city of Weimar, Germany. While living in Berlin for almost a decade, Rozell was also the German correspondent for The Art Newspaper, a curator of contemporary art and a consultant to galleries and Villa Grisebach Auctions. She has written and lectured extensively about Berlin’s emerging art scene and architectural landscape, and is the author of numerous journal articles, catalogue essays and translations.
UBS Art Collection – Current Activities
Milan
From 17 June through 4 October, 2015, Don’t Shoot the Painter. Paintings from the UBS Art Collection, curated by Francesco Bonami, will open at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan, Italy (GAM). The exhibition, one of the largest to be organized to date, features more than 100 works from the UBS Art Collection by artists including John Baldessari, Jean Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, Fischli/Weiss, Gilbert & George, Katharina Grosse, Damien Hirst, Gerhard Richter, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Christopher Wool, among others.
Basel
In June during Art Basel, UBS will present an installation in the UBS lounge of nearly 30 works by renowned British artist Lucian Freud, curated in collaboration with Louisiana Museum of Modern Art’s Anders Kold. These works and others by Lucian Freud from the UBS Art Collection will make up the museum’s upcoming works on paper exhibition Louisiana on Paper: Lucian Freud, on view in Denmark from 3 September through 20 November, 2015.
