UBS celebrates Art Basel in Miami Beach 2015

UBS, global Lead Partner of Art Basel, celebrates the opening of Art Basel in Miami Beach — the premier show of the Americas — with several projects that extend the company’s longstanding commitment to contemporary art. This year UBS marks its 22nd anniversary of partnering with Art Basel, supporting the organization on a global level and across all three shows in Basel, Miami Beach and Hong Kong.

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“Our partnership with Art Basel is a core component of our broad involvement with contemporary art, which is inspired by our company’s own role as an art collector,” stated John Mathews, Managing Director and Head of Private Wealth Management, UBS Americas. “From our initiatives this year in Miami Beach to recent exhibitions of our collection in Italy and Denmark, to original video collaborations with innovators such as online platform Artsy and the acclaimed exhibition space Swiss Institute, our sustained support of contemporary art is an essential part of our history and corporate culture.”

UBS Planet Art – Recharging Lounge at Art Basel in Miami Beach

This year during the fair, UBS hosts its first public pop-up space at the fair in the Miami Beach Botanical Garden, the 2.6-acre urban greenspace located directly across from the convention center. Fairgoers and art enthusiasts are invited to experience UBS’s signature art news resource—the app Planet Art, while enjoying free access to Wi-Fi, phone charging stations and light refreshments.

Planet Art for iPad was launched at Art Basel in Miami Beach in 2014. New developments in 2015 included: launch of the iPhone version at Art Basel in Hong Kong; an updated user experience for both iPad and iPhone; an improved keyword search capability; a refined preferences section, called “My Stream,” which allows users to personalize their Planet Art tags according to their interests; and additional news sources so that the app currently includes content from more than 80 international art outlets.

This first-of-its-kind app relies on a unique algorithm to analyze and index thousands of articles and millions of data points in real time, with a content stream that can be personalized to follow news on a user’s favorite artists, institutions, cities and events. Planet Art is a winner of the prestigious Red Dot in the Red Dot Award: Communication Design 2015, an international competition for design in advertising campaigns, marketing strategies and creative solutions. Click here for more information on Planet Art and here to download Planet Art.

UBS Supports Art Basel’s Crowdfunding Initiative

As a continuation of UBS’s collaboration with Art Basel, anyone who downloads Planet Art during the month of December also can use the app to support Art Basel’s Crowdfunding Initiative, nominating one of several visual art non-profits to receive a pledge of $15 from UBS (from among NuMu, Guatemala; TEOR/éTica, Costa Rica; Ghetto Biennale, Haiti; SOMA, Mexico; The Andy Warhol Museum, USA; Museo Tamayo, Mexico; Dallas Contemporary, USA and; Turquoise Mountain, Afghanistan).

Swiss Institute Artist Video Collaboration

Continuing its commitment to developing innovative resources that demystify the artworld and help audiences gain interest and confidence in navigating its complex landscape, UBS has partnered with the Swiss Institute in New York and its director Simon Castets, to develop SI Visions. The online project, launched last month, is a new artist-led video series that provides valuable and engaging insight into the work of some of today’s most forward-looking artists from a first-person perspective. The multi-episode series focuses on a single artist and the special interests that inform and inspire his or her work. (Such as CGI and video gaming and our transforming relationship to the environment.) The first four artists to be featured include: Dora Budor (b. 1984, Croatia), Sean Raspet (b. 1981, USA), Tabor Robak (b. 1986, USA) and Pamela Rosenkranz (b. 1979, Switzerland). SI: Visions depicts the texture and energy of creative processes and ideas, offering new viewpoint on the ways artists see the world as they navigate specialist information, new materials and networks of collaborators. Beginning on Wednesday, December 3, the series will launch and will be hosted on the websites of Swiss Institute and UBS, YouTube, vimeo, and youku, and abbreviated versions will be released via social media channels. UBS will debut the first video in the series at Art Basel in Miami Beach, where they will be screened in the UBS Planet Art Recharging Lounge (on screens and iPads) and at a private event co-hosted by Swiss Institute on Thursday, December 3.

UBS Art Collection Highlights

This year’s annual presentation of work from the UBS Art Collection explores the theme of Inside:Out, complementing and drawing inspiration from the bright, airy and sophisticated redesign of the UBS Lounge and its new hanging garden. The installation features approximately 30 works of art by 15 artists that reflect the notion of bringing the outside in, breaking down barriers between fiction and reality and between public and private space to create images inspired by fantasy, pleasure, sensation, nature and alternative landscapes. A highlight is the newly acquired Native Land (2014), a lightbox by Doug Aitken. Filled with a mosaic of colorful roadside signs, this work highlights the intrusion of advertisements in the American landscape. Additional featured artists include Vija Celmins, Francesco Clemente, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Gilbert & George, Andreas Gursky, Catherine Opie, Marc Quinn, Caio Reisewitz, Gerhard Richter, Pipilotti Rist, David Schnell, Simmons & Burke, Xaviera Simmons, Thomas Struth and Corinne Wasmuht. The works, selected by UBS Art Collection Curator for the Americas Jacqueline Lewis, represent a globally diverse range of artists, themes and media, including installations, kinetic sculpture, painting, drawing and photography.

UBS & Contemporary Art

UBS has a long and substantial record of patronage in contemporary art and actively enables clients and audiences to participate in the international conversation about art and the global market through the firm’s contemporary art platform. UBS’s extensive roster of contemporary art initiatives and programs currently include: the UBS Art Collection, one of the world’s largest and most important corporate collections of contemporary art; the firm’s long-term support for the premier international Art Basel shows in Switzerland, Miami Beach and Hong Kong, for which UBS serves as global Lead Partner; and a collaboration with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation on the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative. These activities are complemented by a number of regional partnerships with fine art institutions including the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland, the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, the Louisiana Museum in Denmark, the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Milan, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. UBS is also partnering with world-renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz on WOMEN: New Portraits, a global exhibition tour of newly commissioned photographs. Launching to the public in London on 16 January 2016 at Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, the exhibition will travel to 10 cities in 12 months: (following London), Tokyo, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Singapore, Mexico City, Istanbul, Frankfurt, New York, and Zurich. In addition, UBS provides its clients with insight into the contemporary art world through the free art news app Planet Art, for Apple iOS; collaborations with the Swiss Institute and the online resource Artsy; as well as services offered by the UBS Art Competence Center and the UBS Arts Forum.

UBS & Art Basel

The relationship between UBS and Art Basel began in 1994 when the Swiss financial services firm began serving as lead sponsor for the original edition of the fair in Basel. In 1999, the partnership was extended to include Art Basel’s ‘Unlimited’ exhibition platform—which enables artists to realize highly original and ambitious projects, and, in 2002, the inaugural edition of Art Basel in Miami Beach. In 2014, UBS became involved with Art Basel in Hong Kong, officially assuming its current role as global Lead Partner of Art Basel for all three of its acclaimed international venues.

About Art Basel

Art Basel stages the world's premier art shows for Modern and contemporary works, sited in Basel, Miami Beach and Hong Kong. Defined by its host city and region, each show is unique, which is reflected in its participating galleries, artworks presented, and the content of parallel programming produced in collaboration with local institutions for each edition. In addition to ambitious stands featuring leading galleries from around the world, each show's exhibition sectors spotlight the latest developments in the visual arts, offering visitors new ideas, new inspiration and new contacts in the art world. For further information please visit: artbasel.com.

About UBS

UBS is committed to providing private, institutional and corporate clients worldwide, as well as retail clients in Switzerland, with superior financial advice and solutions while generating attractive and sustainable returns for shareholders. Its strategy centers on its Wealth Management and Wealth Management Americas businesses and its leading universal bank in Switzerland, complemented by its Global Asset Management business and its Investment Bank. These businesses share three key characteristics: they benefit from a strong competitive position in their targeted markets, are capital-efficient, and offer a superior structural growth and profitability outlook. UBS's strategy builds on the strengths of all of its businesses and focuses its efforts on areas in which it excels, while seeking to capitalize on the compelling growth prospects in the businesses and regions in which it operates. Capital strength is the foundation of its success.

UBS is present in all major financial centers worldwide. It has offices in more than 50 countries, with about 35% of its employees working in the Americas, 36% in Switzerland, 17% in the rest of Europe, the Middle East and Africa and 12% in Asia Pacific. UBS Group AG employs about 60,000 people around the world. Its shares are listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Caption: Doug Aitken, Native Land (2014), © Doug Aitken, courtesy 303 Gallery, New York; Victoria Miro Gallery, London; Galerie Presenhuber, Zürich; Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

Links
www.ubs.com/art
www.ubs.com/PlanetArt
www.twitter.com/ubsglobalart

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