Dr. Uli Sigg at UZH: What and When?

Zurich, September 2025 – The University of Zurich (UZH) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Uli Sigg, Swiss entrepreneur, diplomat, and internationally renowned collector of contemporary Chinese art, as Visiting Professor at the Chair of East Asian Art History for the Fall Semester 2025.

As part of his appointment, Dr. Sigg will teach Inside the Art World: Collecting, Curating, and Cultural Diplomacy in the Chinese Cultural Sphere. The course offers students first-hand insights into how contemporary Chinese art is collected, canonized, and negotiated, while critically examining the political, economic, and institutional forces that shape today’s global art ecosystem.

Inside the Art World: Collecting, Curating, and Cultural Diplomacy in the Chinese Cultural Sphere with Uli Sigg

With China playing an increasingly influential role in the global art world, this course—taught by Uli Sigg, Visiting Professor at the Chair of East Asian Art History—offers a practice-oriented introduction to the structures and dynamics of the contemporary art world.
Drawing on the extensive professional experience of Uli Sigg— Swiss entrepreneur, former ambassador to PR China, North Korea and Mongolia, prominent collector, and curator —the course critically explores the interconnected roles of collectors, curators, institutions, markets and artists in the production, circulation, and reception of contemporary art. It investigates the global contemporary art ecosystem and contextualizes cultural practices within socio-economic and political structures, both regionally and globally.
Through lectures and discussions, students will engage with key topics including collecting practices, curatorial strategies, market formation, institutional development, and the cultural politics of art patronage. Special emphasis will be placed on case studies from Sigg’s collection, exhibitions and other cultural activities, including the establishment of the M+ Sigg Collection in Hong Kong and his broader influence on the historiography and formation of the canon of contemporary Chinese art.
Open to BA, MA, and PhD students across disciplines, the course bridges academic study and professional practice, contributing to the interdisciplinary training objectives of the Chair for East Asian Art History.

On 9 December 2025, the Chair of East Asian Art History at the University of Zurich inaugurated its new Roundtable Series: East Asian Art in Dialogue, with an opening event "In Conversation with Uli Sigg."The evening brought together academics, cultural professionals, and members of the wider public interested in Chinese and East Asian art.

The programme opened with welcome remarks by Prof. Dr. Christian Schwarzenegger (UZH Vice President Faculty Affairs and Scientific Information), followed by a public lecture by Dr. Uli Sigg, Between the Private and the Public: Collecting as Cultural Discourse, in which he reflected on his experiences as a collector and on the role of collecting in shaping global cultural narratives.

The lecture was followed by a roundtable discussion with Dr. Uli Sigg; Dr. Kathleen Bühler (Chief Curator, Head of Collection, Exhibitions, Research, Kunstmuseum Bern); Prof. Dr. Ewa Machotka (Chair of East Asian Art History, UZH) addressing questions of collecting, institutions, and the role of Chinese and East Asian art in Switzerland. The evening concluded with an informal apéro and networking session. 

Approximately 320 participants joined the event, representing academia, museums, cultural institutions, the art market, collectors, philanthropists, and an engaged public, providing clear evidence of strong interest in and commitment to cross-sectoral dialogue around Chinese and East Asian art.

In the spring term 2026, a virtual exhibition titled Unframed: The Sigg Collection Goes Virtual will be developed and curated by students as part of a Digital Museology course offered by the Chair of East Asian Art History (lecturer: Dr. Stephanie Santschi)

The Chair of East Asian Art History at UZH

The Chair of East Asian Art History at the University of Zurich, led by Prof. Dr. Ewa Machotka, is dedicated to the study of the visual cultures of China, Japan, and Korea from antiquity to the present. Established more than fifty years ago, it remains the only chair of its kind in Switzerland and serves as a hub for research and teaching in East Asian art history, both nationally and internationally. Research and teaching at the Chair combine close engagement with objects and archives with critical theoretical perspectives. Emphasis is placed on the transnational circulation and reception of East Asian art, with a particular focus on the European and Swiss contexts, drawing on the country’s rich museum and private collections. The Chair is also committed to interdisciplinary approaches and to fostering dialogue beyond academia, engaging with broader social debates around globalization, digital transformation, environmental crisis, and cultural heritage. 

Link to webpage of the Chair of East Asian Art History, UZH

Dr. Uli Sigg

Uli Sigg, Swiss entrepreneur, diplomat, and collector, is widely recognized as the leading  patron of contemporary Chinese art. His engagement with China began in the late 1970s, initially as a businessman establishing the first foreign-invested enterprise in China, before serving as the Ambassador of the Swiss Confederation to China, Mongolia, and North Korea in the 1990s. During this period, Sigg built strong connections with the young artists of the emerging Chinese avant-garde, collecting their works at a time when contemporary Chinese art had yet to receive local and global recognition. In addition, he played a key part in fostering critical discourse on contemporary art by establishing the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (CCAA, since 2019 SIGG PRIZE) in 1997 and the CCAA Art Critic Award in 2007, both of which continue to shape the field today. His efforts not only fostered and safeguarded works of China’s artistic transformation but also provided the foundation for scholarly research and institutional engagement with contemporary Chinese art, in China and globally. In 2012, Sigg made a landmark donation of over 1,400 works from his collection to M+, the leading museum for contemporary visual culture in Hong Kong (designed by Herzog & de Meuron, opened 2021). This donation remains the most comprehensive collection of contemporary Chinese art in existence and serves as an important resource for understanding China’s artistic developments since the late 20th century. Uli Sigg remains actively engaged with Chinese art to this day.

Prof. Dr. Ewa Machotka 

Ewa Machotka is Professor and Chair of East Asian Art History at the University of Zurich. She received her PhD in Japanese Art History from Gakushuin University, Tokyo (2008), supported by a fellowship from the Japanese Ministry of Education. Before joining UZH, she served as Professor of Japanese Language and Culture at Stockholm University, Assistant Professor of Japanese Art and Visual Culture at Leiden University (2011–2017), and Curator of Japanese Art at the National Museum in Krakow, Poland (1999–2008). She has also held several visiting appointments, including a Fellowship at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies (2023–24). Her research focuses on Japanese art and visual culture, with particular interests in early modern printed culture. She engages broadly with global and transcultural art history, with emphases on postcolonial theory, canon formation and collecting histories, and, more recently, environmental art history and digital art history, including computational macroanalysis of multimodal artifacts. She has published widely, including Hokusai’s Hyakunin Isshu (2009) and Consuming Life in Post-Bubble Japan (2018, with K. Cwiertka), and is currently completing a monograph on representations of environmental disaster in early modern Japanese visual culture.