UCCA was founded as Ullens Center for Contemporary Art by collectors Guy and Myriam Ullens, and opened in 2007. In 2017, it transitioned to the stewardship of a dedicated group of new Chinese and international patrons and shareholders. Now officially known as UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, it continues its founding mission of improving lives, and promoting cultural exchange, through art.

UCCA Beijing is housed in factory chambers built in the 1950s and designed by East German architects of the Dessau Design Institute, the postwar successor to the Bauhaus Dessau. These buildings maintain traces of their industrial past. The spaces were fully renovated by architects Jean-Michel Wilmotte and Qingyun Ma in 2007, and underwent a further regeneration designed by OMA and completed in 2019. With a total area of over 10,000 square meters, it spreads across three buildings and includes the signature Great Hall, further galleries, public spaces, an auditorium, and spaces for events, education, and research.

Since its founding, UCCA has presented more than 140 exhibitions. The opening exhibition “’85 New Wave: The Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art” (2007), curated by founding artistic director Fei Dawei, is regarded as the first institutional attempt to present a history of the Chinese avant-garde in the PRC. Subsequent shows have continued to demarcate generations, including “Breaking Forecast: 8 Key Figures of China’s New Generation Artists” (2009), “ON | OFF: China’s Young Artists in Concept and Practice” (2013), “Hans van Dijk: 5000 Names” (2014), and “The New Normal: Art, China, and 2017.” UCCA’s exhibition program is also known for the solo surveys and retrospectives it has granted to key figures in the ongoing history of advanced art in China, including Geng Jianyi, Cao Fei, Xu Bing, Xie Nanxing, Zhao Bandi, Hao Liang, Zeng Fanzhi, Wang Yin, Liu Wei, Zhao Gang, Xu Zhen, Ji Dachun, Wang Keping, Wang Xingwei, Kan Xuan, Yung-ho Chang, Yun-fei Ji, Gu Dexin, Zhan Wang, Wang Jianwei, Liu Jianhua, Liu Xiaodong, Yu Hong, Zhang Huan, Song Dong, Yin Xiuzhen, Chen Wenbo, Yan Lei, Yan Pei-Ming, Qiu Zhijie, and Huang Yong Ping, among others.

UCCA has also mounted major exhibitions with international artists including Matthew Barney,  Sarah Morris, Robert Rauschenberg, John Gerrard, Elmgreen & Dragset, Peter Wayne Lewis, Haegue Yang, David Diao, Korakrit Arunanondchai, William Kentridge, Lee Mingwei, Ming Wong, Pawel Althamer, Taryn Simon, Tehching Hsieh, Tino Sehgal, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Tatsuo Miyashima, Walead Beshty, Olafur Eliasson, Not Vital, Kehinde Wiley, Mona Hatoum, and Lawrence Weiner. Through these exhibitions and related programs, UCCA has built vital links between China’s art scene and the wider world, and exposed audiences to figures they may not otherwise have had the chance to encounter directly.

A commitment to emerging artists throughout China has long been a core thread in UCCA’s exhibition program, most recently through the “New Sites” series of lecture performances (2019-), the “New Directions” series of exhibitions (2015-2019), and the “Curated by…” series of exhibitions (2009-2011). Further exhibitions have explored related areas of visual culture including photography, architecture, and design. UCCA frequently collaborates with leading international institutions to stage major exhibitions outside of Beijing or even China, furthering its mission of presenting Chinese contemporary art in a global context. Notable examples include “Bentu, Chinese artists in a time of turbulence and transformation” (Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, 2016) and “Cao Fei: A Hollow in a World Too Full” (Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, 2018).

UCCA underwent a major transition in 2016 and 2017, as the founders transferred ownership to a new group of patrons and shareholders. As part of this process, UCCA evolved from a single organization housing a wide range of functions into the UCCA Group. UCCA Center for Contemporary Art is the core entity of this group, and is now registered as a museum in China. UCCA Foundation for Art and Education was also established to support research and outreach initiatives and is accredited by the Beijing Bureau of Civil Affairs. Meanwhile, UCCA Store, UCCA Kids, and UCCA Lab were incorporated as discrete companies belonging to UCCA Group.

In October 2018, the institution opened a second exhibition space, UCCA Dune, in Beidaihe, along the coast of the Bohai Sea a few hours travel from Beijing. Located in the seaside Aranya Gold Coast Community and designed by Open Architecture, the museum is nestled beneath a sand dune. Since its inaugural exhibition “After Nature,” UCCA Dune has hosted an exhibition program specifically informed by its meditative setting, emphasizing the relationship between art, humanity, and the natural world.

Opened in May 2021, UCCA Edge occupies 5,500 square meters over three levels of the new EDGE tower in Shanghai’s Jing’an District. Designed by New York- based architects SO – IL, the museum includes 1700 square meters of gallery space as well as a wraparound outdoor terrace and public spaces including a lobby and auditorium. As an integral part of the UCCA constellation, UCCA Edge mounts exhibitions of leading Chinese and international artists, some developed exclusively for the Shanghai audience, some touring from other UCCA locations. Situated just north of People’s Square and Suzhou Creek, and directly above the Qufu Lu station of the Shanghai Metro in a bustling revitalized neighborhood, UCCA Edge has already become an essential destination and an integral part of Shanghai’s vibrant cultural fabric.

Revitalized in its second decade by a new governance structure, the opening of UCCA Dune, and the architectural regeneration of its flagship Beijing space, UCCA remains steadfast in its commitment to deepening lives and promoting intercultural exchange through contemporary art.

UCCA and its activities have received extensive press coverage from leading art, news, culture, and lifestyle publications. 

Philip Tinari
Director, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art
CEO, UCCA Group

Since coming to UCCA in 2011, Philip Tinari has led its transformation from a founder-owned private museum into an accredited museum across multiple locations, a public foundation, and a family of art-driven enterprises. During his tenure, UCCA has mounted more than seventy exhibitions and thousands of public programs, bringing artistic voices established and emerging, Chinese and international, to an audience of over a million visitors each year. From 2009 to 2012 he founded and edited LEAP, the first internationally distributed, bilingual magazine of contemporary art in China. He is a contributing editor of Artforum, and launched the magazine’s Chinese edition in 2008. Having written extensively on contemporary art in China, he was co-curator of the 2017 exhibition Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. In 2021 he led the curatorial team for Saudi Arabia’s first biennale of contemporary art, the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale. Based in Beijing since 2001 and fluent in Mandarin, Tinari is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and a fellow of the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on US-China Relations. He holds degrees from Duke and Harvard.

Photo: Stefen Chow