About UCCA Center for Contemporary Art

UCCA Center for Contemporary Art

The UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, in Chinese Youlunsi Dangdai Yishu Zhongxin, is a leading independent contemporary art institution in Beijing's 798 Art District. Founded in November 2007 by the Belgian collectors Guy and Myriam Ullens as the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, it is housed in Bauhaus-influenced factory buildings dating from the 1950s in the former factory complex that became the 798 Art District. UCCA has presented more than 200 exhibitions of Chinese and international artists and welcomes over one million visitors a year. In 2017 the Ullens family transferred the institution to a group of Chinese and international patrons, and it now operates as the UCCA Group: the non-profit UCCA Foundation organises exhibitions, research and public programmes, while UCCA Enterprises runs art-driven retail and education ventures. Satellite sites followed — UCCA Dune in Beidaihe in 2018, UCCA Edge in Shanghai in 2021 and a further site in Yixing, Jiangsu. Its official website is ucca-group.com.

Founding by Guy and Myriam Ullens

UCCA was founded out of a commitment to bring Chinese contemporary art into global dialogue. Guy Ullens, a Belgian collector and philanthropist, had after retiring dedicated himself to the arts, and with his wife Myriam he championed the conceptually rigorous, politically engaged work of the post-1989 generation of Chinese artists — figures such as Zeng Fanzhi, Huang Yong Ping and Wang Guangyi — whose work formed the backbone of the Ullens Collection. In November 2007, after two years of renovation of its factory buildings in the 798 Art District, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art opened as one of China's first private contemporary art museums: a non-profit, non-collecting, non-governmental institution. The distinction matters — UCCA was founded to exhibit and research contemporary art, not to hold the Ullens Collection, which was never owned by the centre itself.

The Opening Exhibition: '85 New Wave

UCCA opened with the exhibition '85 New Wave: The Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art, curated alongside the centre's founding director Fei Dawei, a veteran of the Chinese avant-garde. The show was the first museum presentation in China of the 1980s Chinese avant-garde — the movement from which the contemporary Chinese art that the Ullens family collected had emerged. Choosing a historical survey as its first exhibition announced UCCA's method from the start: it would treat Chinese contemporary art as a history to be documented and argued about, not only as a present to be displayed. That founding gesture set the pattern for a programme that has consistently combined retrospectives and historical research with exhibitions of new work by Chinese and international artists.

The Building in the 798 Art District

UCCA Beijing occupies some 10,000 square metres at the core of the 798 Art District, in a factory building built in 1957 — part of the complex of electronics factories, designed with East German assistance in the Bauhaus-influenced style, whose arched, north-lit workshops became the district's architectural signature. The centre's buildings, like all those in 798, are owned by the state-run Sevenstar Group, with which UCCA holds a long-term partnership rather than ownership of its premises. The original conversion for UCCA was carried out by Jean-Michel Wilmotte with Qingyun Ma. A later redesign by the Dutch architecture firm OMA, completed in 2019 after a two-month closure, gave UCCA a new facade, entrance, lobby, galleries, children's educational space, store and cafe. Director Philip Tinari explained the problem the redesign solved: for all its public reach, the centre had lacked a proper street presence, and some visitors had struggled to find the entrance.

Directors: From Fei Dawei to Philip Tinari

UCCA's leadership traces the institution's professionalisation. Fei Dawei, its founding director, was a central figure of the 1980s avant-garde itself. Jérôme Sans was among the directors who followed in the centre's early years. From 2011 the director has been Philip Tinari, a curator, critic and art historian born in Philadelphia in 1979, who first came to Beijing on a Fulbright fellowship in 2001 to study comparative literature, founded the bilingual art magazine LEAP in 2009, and holds degrees from Duke, Harvard and Oxford. Under Tinari, UCCA consolidated its position as a bridge between the Chinese and international art scenes; in 2017 he served as guest co-curator of the Guggenheim's major exhibition of Chinese art, and he remained director through the institution's change of ownership that year, later also serving as its chief executive.

The 2017 Restructuring

In June 2016 the Ullens family announced it would seek new owners for UCCA and sell the bulk of its Chinese contemporary art holdings, prompting a year of uncertainty about the future of one of mainland China's leading private art institutions. In 2017 a group of China-based investors and patrons — the purchase led by the education corporation Future Edutainment and advertising entrepreneur Jason Jiang — acquired the institution, separating its commercial and non-profit functions to ensure its long-term presence in the 798 Art District and secure its future vision. Under the new structure, the UCCA Foundation was registered to run the public-facing, non-commercial work — exhibitions, research and public outreach — as a charity able to raise funds and attract donors, while commercial activities sat within UCCA Enterprises. Tinari observed that the old model had worked under Mr Ullens's generosity but had been set up as a private company; the foundation model was designed to outlast any single patron.

Museum Status and the UCCA Group

In 2018 UCCA formally received museum accreditation and became a licensed non-profit foundation registered with the Beijing Bureau of Civil Affairs and in Hong Kong. The group structure that resulted pairs UCCA Foundation, which organises exhibitions, research, public programmes and community outreach, with UCCA Enterprises, a family of art-driven retail and educational ventures that includes the UCCA Store and children's art education. The centre's annual operating budget was reported during the transition at around 40 million yuan. The restructuring is widely treated as a case study in how a founder-dependent private museum in China could be converted into a durable institution: the founder's collection had never belonged to the centre, so what the new owners acquired — and what the foundation now sustains — is a programme, a building lease, an audience of more than a million visitors a year and a name.

Expansion: Dune, Edge and Yixing

The restructured institution expanded beyond Beijing. In 2018 UCCA Dune opened in Beidaihe, on the Aranya Gold Coast, carved discreetly into the sand dunes to create a contemplative setting for contemporary art — a museum largely buried beneath the dune landscape it serves. In 2021 UCCA Edge opened in Shanghai's Jing'an District, occupying three floors of the EDGE Tower and giving the Beijing institution a permanent presence in China's other art capital. A further site followed in Yixing, Jiangsu. The expansion realised, at larger scale, the multi-location platform implicit in the original vision: UCCA became a group operating museums of different characters — the flagship factory halls in 798, a dune museum on the Bohai coast, and urban galleries in Shanghai and Yixing — under one foundation and one curatorial identity.

Programme and Public Role

Across its history UCCA has presented more than 200 exhibitions, combining solo presentations of Chinese and international artists with thematic and historical surveys, and it has done so as a non-collecting institution — its authority rests on curating and scholarship rather than on holdings. Its public programmes, research and community outreach are run through the foundation, and its exhibitions regularly travel or connect to international partners, reflecting the founding commitment to place Chinese contemporary art in global dialogue. The centre's gala and its role in events such as Beijing Gallery Weekend anchor it in the city's art calendar. When Guy Ullens died, UCCA's tribute summarised his legacy as enduring in the institution he founded, the artists he championed and the communities he helped build — a fair summary of what, since November 2007, the centre in the 798 factory buildings has continued to do under new ownership.