UBS: ART BASEL MIAMI 201
Press Release
UBS is proud to once again be main sponsor of Art Basel Miami Beach, the most important art show in the Americas. On view at the Miami Beach Convention Center from December 1 – 4, 2011, the 10th edition of Art Basel Miami Beach will feature more than 260 leading galleries from North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa and will showcase works by more than 2,000 artists of the 20th and 21st Centuries.
“UBS congratulates Art Basel Miami Beach on its dedication to excellence over the years, and enthusiastically joins it in celebrating ten great years of the show and of our partnership,” said Robert Wolf, Chairman, UBS Americas. “At UBS, we believe that art is a means of sharing insight – something we strive to do every day, as we share financial perspectives with our clients and create tailored financial solutions for them. In the United States our decade-long partnership with Art Basel Miami Beach is the cornerstone of our commitment to make contemporary art accessible to our clients, employees and the community.”
In honor of this special celebration, UBS will feature the work of renowned American painter and sculptor Ellsworth Kelly in the UBS Lounge and in all sponsorship communications. The work selected from the UBS Art Collection, a 1972 collage on paper titled Spectrum, reflects the artist’s deep observation of color and is an example of the simple forms and shapes made up of intense monochrome color fields that characterize much of Kelly’s work. The UBS Art Collection consists of more than 35,000 objects by artists ranging from today’s emerging talents to some of the most important artists of the last 50 years. The public is invited to view works from the Collection by visiting the interactive web museum at www.ubs.com/artcollection.
In addition to featuring Spectrum, UBS in partnership with the Art Production Fund, has commissioned American artist Leo Villareal to create a new work titled Coded Spectrum (2011), a digital light sculpture inspired by Ellsworth Kelly’s Spectrum. Coded Spectrum is based on the dimensions of Kelly's work, with each of the 13 vertical color strips becoming a light portal, individually programmed by the artist. Coded Spectrum will be unveiled at a private event, where guests will be given the opportunity to bid on the artwork at auction. UBS will partner with the Miami Foundation to allocate all auction proceeds to charitable programming providing arts education for underserved youth in the Miami area. Starting Thursday, December 1, the artwork will reside in the UBS Lounge during the run of Art Basel Miami Beach.
UBS strives to integrate education into each of its sponsorships, making art more accessible in the communities in which it does business. At Art Basel Miami Beach 2010, UBS supported the launch of the miART program by the HandsOn Network. miART is an arts mentoring program for aspiring student artists from local Miami-Dade public high schools who have been paired with local artists at regular activities throughout 2011. As a highlight of the program, we will host a special session for miART students during Art Basel Miami Beach 2011 led by artist Leo Villareal, who will share his creative process and technique of working with lights and color. During the workshop, each student will have the opportunity to create a piece of light art with individual LED kits and guidance from Villareal and his team of assistants.
In reference to his partnership with UBS, Leo Villareal stated: "I have always appreciated Ellsworth Kelly's Spectrum works and was inspired to take a closer look into their origin in order to create Coded Spectrum. What particularly interests me is the way Kelly boils things down to their essence in order to reveal underlying structures. Coded Spectrum is a contemporary interpretation of Kelly's seminal work that adds light and computation to the mix."
UBS has a longstanding commitment to contemporary art through our sponsorship programs and the UBS Art Collection. In addition to Art Basel Miami Beach, UBS has been the main sponsor of Art Basel for the last 18 years, In the United States, UBS currently sponsors the Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Ravinia Festival in Chicago as well as the Utah Symphony and the Festival Casals in Puerto Rico in the region. In addition to contemporary art, the firm also supports Formula One Racing and other regional events of local relevance through a dynamic global sponsorship portfolio.
About UBS
UBS draws on its 150-year heritage to serve private, institutional and corporate clients worldwide, as well as retail clients in Switzerland. We combine our wealth management, investment banking and asset management businesses with our Swiss operations to deliver superior financial solutions. UBS is present in all major financial centers worldwide. It has offices in over 50 countries, with about 37% of its employees working in the Americas, 37% in Switzerland, 16% in the rest of Europe and 10% in Asia Pacific. UBS employs about 66,000 people around the world. Its shares are listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
