Manuela Wirth on Transforming Hauser & Wirth into so Much More than a Gallery

Hauser & Wirth, the gallery that you and your husband, Iwan Wirth, jointly run, is a global juggernaut. You grew up in the Swiss countryside. Did you inherit a passion for artists from your mother, Ursula Hauser, who collected art while working full-time after the premature death of your father?

I was born a collector. As a child, I collected seashells, stones, precious things I found outdoors. Then I fell in love with textiles, and I started collecting embroideries and wool.

You started out teaching arts and crafts, cooking, and home economics to children in a village school. How did you shift into the art business?

I was working part-time in my mother’s small gallery, where she organized shows with local artists. When my mother began partnering with Iwan Wirth, who was 19 years old then, I worked half the time as a teacher and half the time in their gallery, Hauser & Wirth. After six years of this, I gave up teaching and became the gallery’s first full-time employee. From there, life just took over. Iwan and I fell in love. We became partners in business and life.

Now that your four kids are grown, do you expect your involvement in the business to expand?

I am able to devote more time in person to our artists. But I have always worked while having a family. I took my infants to my office. They lay on sheepskins while I was at my desk. We organized our schedules around all the biennales, museum shows, and gallery events so we still could be very present for the kids.

How has your role at the gallery changed over time?

One example: Over the past 10 years, I have formalized and built the gallery’s public education activities into a true global Hauser & Wirth Learning initiative. It stretches across all our locations and has its own dedicated staff. Our artists and estates—Mark Bradford, Avery Singer, Anj Smith, the Guston Estate, and so many others—participate actively in designing learning programs. And this November, I launched a project I have dreamed of for years: the Forgotten Her Story, a platform to celebrate extraordinary women makers. The purpose is to document and share legacies of women whom you might not have heard of before but will never forget once you do.

You have 21 locations around the world, some in expected places—New York, London, Paris—and others not. How do you choose where to open new spaces?

So much of our gallery’s evolution has been organic. In Somerset, England, we wanted to save an abandoned 18th-century farmstead near our home in the countryside. In the process of restoring those buildings, we realized the site would be a wonderful place to present art in a natural setting, so we opened Hauser & Wirth Somerset in 2014. It became a model for locations in Los Angeles and in Menorca and Chillida Leku, Spain. Often, we have a strong personal connection to a location. Like Somerset, Menorca is a place we love, where we spend holidays.

Tell me about Artfarm, the hospitality business of inns and restaurants that you started with Iwan in 2014.

For Hauser & Wirth Somerset, we created a restaurant called Roth Bar, named for Dieter Roth. Because Somerset is far from the city, we wanted to give visitors reasons to stay. That inspired us to create another restaurant in the old factory in Downtown Los Angeles where we opened Hauser & Wirth two years later. The complex had enough space to make a garden with planting beds and a chicken coop to supply the restaurant. We followed this model with Hauser & Wirth Menorca. And in Scotland, we reopened the Fife Arms, an inn filled with art and historic collections, for Christmas 2018.

Our newest project is a restaurant in New York City, in SoHo, down the street from our gallery. It’s named Manuela, like its sister restaurant in Los Angeles. We hope it will become a place that artists and all the new creative people working in that neighborhood make their own.

Many of the artists I know seem like overgrown children. Has your experience as a mother and teacher crossed over into your work with artists?

We always say our gallery is like a big family. But it’s mutual—they teach us so much. We give love, support, and advice to all our artists. Some take our advice to heart, some perhaps want little of that advice. Just like our kids!

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