COURTESY HAUSER & WIRTH
The unrelenting race at the highest echelon of the international art world shows no sign of slowing down, with global heavyweight Hauser & Wirth now planning to open a location in the luxe alpine resort town of St. Moritz, Switzerland, in December. Debuting with a Louise Bourgeois show, it will be the ninth branch in the gallery’s real-estate portfolio, and the third in the country where Hauser & Wirth first opened for business, in Zurich in 1992.
The St. Moritz enterprise, located in Badrutt’s Palace Hotel, will sport 4,400 square feet of exhibition space designed by architect Luis Laplace, who worked on Hauser & Wirth’s private gallery in Gstaad, on the opposite Western end of Switzerland, and its spread on an 18th-century farm in Somerset, England.
The St. Moritz plan comes as a number of other ultra-blue-chip galleries have rushed to open spaces in locations favored by wealthy collectors. Earlier this year, Hauser & Wirth and David Zwirner both opened branches in Hong Kong, and Pace opened its second there. Pace also opened an outpost in Geneva, Switzerland, in March. In New York, Hauser & Wirth is currently building a roughly 32,000-square-foot five-story home on West 22nd Street in Chelsea.
Once the forthcoming spot is up and running, Hauser & Wirth, which represents artists like Mark Bradford, Paul McCarthy, Phyllida Barlow, and many more, will have a gallery empire that encompasses the following: spaces in London, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Somerset, two in New York, and three in Switzerland, in Zurich, Gstaad, and St. Moritz. Fun fact: those last three municipalities are located at a nice variety of elevations: about 1,300, 3,400, and 5,900 feet above sea level, respectively.