Synopsis
For this piece, I convinced Uli Sigg to collaborate on the first major article on his now-famous collection of contemporary Chinese Art, which is not just a collection but an archive of China's cultural development in the late 20th century. The former Swiss ambassador to China (and North Korea!) became what iconic curator Harald Szeemann called “the ambassador of Chinese art in the West,” amassing over 1,200 pieces, not for market speculation but rather a send off cultural obligation. “Contemporary art had just begun to exist in China when I arrived,” Sigg explained, “at first, artists didn’t know what to do with their freedom.”
