UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art

project Jean-Michel Wilmotte
photos and text Jean-Pierre Gabriel

In Beijing, by the architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte, the UCCA stands out for its brick smokestack, left from the site’s days as a weapons factory. It now contains the private collection of contemporary Chinese art of two patrons and visionaries, the Belgian couple Guy and Myriam Ullens.

Officially opened on Monday 5 November 2007, with the exhibition “85 New Wave: the birth of Chinese contemporary art”, the UCCA (Ullens Center for Contemporary Art) is the first museum of its kind to open its doors in continental China. It took fifteen months for Guy and Myriam Ullens to realize their dream of transforming a former arms factory into a museum operating on an international level. They turned to the French architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte, who has a particular talent for transforming historical buildings into contemporary places. “What we had available” he explains “were two large naves built by the East Germans in the 1950s, for a total of about 6500 sq meters. We kept two elements from the past: the large brick smokestack that rises into the sky and a sort of tank. The two face each other in the first nave. The purpose of the museum is to contain the 1500 works of the Ullens foundation, but also to create a place of exchange, creation, interaction. To work with other museums and to obtain, from authoritative institutions and leading collectors, loans of important works, it was necessary that the climate control and lighting of the facility be of excellent quality”. Wilmotte concentrated on the first nave, containing the exhibition spaces, but also the auditorium, cafe and bookshop. “Without altering the architectural structure” he says “expressed in the repetition of the concrete spans, we created a mezzanine supported by a rhythmical sequence of pillars, to contain the offices, the conference rooms and a library/research center that is open to scholars, students and artists”. The second nave has been completely conserved; under its 10 meters of vaults large exhibitions can be installed. After the opening show on ’85 New Wave and a retrospective on Huang Yong Ping, this summer UCCA will present the best of the Ullens collection, known as the world’s leading collection of contemporary Chinese art, at least in terms of quality. A true feat in more ways than one, the UCCA has met a singular challenge, succeeding where others, like the Centre Pompidou, have failed: the creation of the first contemporary art museum in China. “At first we thought about putting it in Shanghai, the business center of China,” Guy Ullens recalls. “But we soon decided that Beijing is the real artistic heart of the country. The former weapons factory of Dashanzi, still known as 798, had already been occupied by artists, and later by a myriad of local and international galleries. We immediately fell in love with these two naves concealed behind the Cochim facade. Then everything happened fast. We were able to sign an 8-year rental contract with the owner. So now we have less than 6 years to make the UCCA a stable, lasting institution”. All the local observers agree. The 798 complex, coveted by many real estate speculators who want to make it into a shopping center, sees the UCCA as its best insurance for the future. In this China of a thousand contrasts, the question now is what that future will bring. The last months of preparation for the Olympics have witnessed the opening of many new galleries, restaurants and venues, symbols of a change that is destined to last.