Uli Sigg Wants To Help Chinese People 'View Their Own Art.' Simple, Right?

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) Over three decades, Uli Sigg, a Swiss businessman and former diplomat, amassed thousands of contemporary Chinese works. Ai Weiwei calls him“my maker.” Select your language

Generated with artificial intelligence. Listening: Uli Sigg wants to help Chinese people 'view their own art.' Simple, right? This content was published on May 22, 2026 - 09:09 9 minutes Mercedes Hutton, The New York Times, Hong Kong

An image of Mao Zedong in the style of a brightly colored pop art print catches the eye, even in a room committed to bright colors. Mao, the former Chinese leader, is wearing red lipstick and heavy eye shadow, à la Marilyn Monroe, his features feminized.

The oil painting of Mao by Yu Youhan, which hangs in a Hong Kong museum, could seem risqué in its choice of subject. In March, Gao Zhen, a Chinese artist known for creating provocative sculptures of Mao, stood trial in China. He has been detained, accused by the authorities of slandering the country's heroes.

Though Hong Kong is not subject to the same laws as the Chinese mainland, freedom of expression in the semiautonomous city has been constricted since Beijing imposed a national security law in 2020, which was expanded on when the city's government passed additional security legislation in 2024. Political cartoons and graphic art that skewered Beijing and its influence in the city, once a mainstay of newspaper columns and street protests in Hong Kong, have all but disappeared.

But to understand Yu's colorful piece,“Untitled (Mao Marilyn)” (2005)External link - one of three of his paintings of Mao shown in the“M+ Sigg Collection: Inner WorldsExternal link” exhibition at M+ museum - as provocative is to misunderstand it, according to one of the exhibition's curators, Wu Mo. The painting reflects what Wu called a“cultural trend” of the late 1990s when nostalgia for Mao surged and his likeness appeared on everything from T-shirts to tote bags.

“Mao, just like Marilyn Monroe, became a pop culture icon instead of a political symbol,” she said during a tour of the exhibition, which highlights works by 38 artists held in the M+ Sigg Collection.

The collection, which the museum says is the largest public collection of Chinese contemporary art in the world, was acquired by M+ in 2012 from Swiss art collector Uli Sigg. But because of the significant changes that Hong Kong underwent before M+ opened in 2021, the museum has more often attracted attention for what it can - and cannot - show.

Building an Encyclopedic Collection

Sigg donated 1,463 works of contemporary Chinese art to M+ and the museum also purchased 47 works from his collection of about 2,000 items. It was the result of many years spent in China.

Sigg first visited the country in 1979 as a businessman and helped establish one of the first joint ventures between the Chinese government and a Western company the following year. He was interested in the country's art scene“from the very beginning,” he said in a video interview from his home in Switzerland last month, a few days before his 80th birthday. But at first, he saw little that he liked.“I just thought, it's nothing for me,” he said.

It was not until the 1990s, after he had left an executive position at the Schindler Group, that he acquired his first works. He began collecting in earnest around the time that he became the Swiss ambassador to China, North Korea and Mongolia, in 1995.

“When I bought a few pieces, you know, I realized no one is collecting Chinese contemporary,” he said.“In the first years, I was the market in China, because no one else bought art like I did.”

And so, Sigg, who had up to that point been buying works that appealed to his tastes, changed his approach.

“I gave myself the mission to do what a national museum ought to do, which is to build what I call an encyclopedic collectionExternal link,” he said.“I thought, you know, this is the biggest cultural space in the world yet no one cares what the contemporary artists were contributing to their culture.”

His approach was welcomed by many Chinese artists.

Ai Weiwei, perhaps the best-known contemporary Chinese artist working today, credits Sigg for his international standing.“I call him 'my maker,'” Ai said of the collector in an email interview.

“His collection covers a very wide range, not only reflecting his personal preferences but rather based on his understanding of what Chinese art is and how contemporary Chinese art differs” from the contemporary art of other places, Ai wrote.

“He is rooted in China,” he added.“His interest is not colonial, but rather that of a discoverer.”

The breadth of Sigg's collection was intentional. He knew, almost from the outset, he said, that the works“would have to be given to China, so that the Chinese people could view their own art.”

It was in this spirit that he made the donation to M+, saying at the time that he had chosen an institution in Hong Kong for the city's freedoms and for its proximity to mainland Chinese audiences.

“My first impulse was to think of the mainland,” he said during a news conference in 2012.“But the conditions are not such that art could be shown without limitations.”

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