Art meets luxury lifestyle at gallery's sunny new Spanish location

Mahon, Spain

AS the total wealth held by billionaires hits a high of more than US$10 trillion, it is also an epic time for luxury lifestyle tourism.

Last week, an unlikely art centre was inaugurated on Saturday on the Spanish islet of Isla del Rey off Menorca - gathering contemporary art lovers to celebrate the latest project by the Swiss-owned art dealership Hauser & Wirth.

While the small island, abandoned in the 1960s after serving as the site of a military hospital, is not the kind of place that traditionally attracts wealthy collectors, Hauser & Wirth is determined to change this.

The international mega-gallery has been fast expanding its core business by also offering its clientele the kind of lifestyle experience that comes from visiting a remote, unique location.

Dominated by its 18th-century hospital, the islet stands in the middle of the Mediterranean's largest natural harbour, 15 minutes by boat from Mahon, Menorca's capital.

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Hauser & Wirth has leased part of the islet's land from a local volunteer foundation that has been working on restoring the hospital for nearly two decades.

While it was seeking approval from the local Spanish authorities, the Swiss gallery - founded in 1992 by Iwan Wirth; his wife, Manuela Wirth; and her mother, Ursula Hauser - invited a delegation from Menorca to visit another of their projects in Somerset, England.

With Hauser & Wirth Somerset, the gallery turned the little-known village of Bruton into an art destination.

Opened in 2014, the complex attracted more than 110,000 visitors in the year before the pandemic hit, said Chloe Kinsman, a Hauser & Wirth spokesperson.

Developed along similar lines, Hauser & Wirth Menorca features a 16,000-square-foot art centre surrounded by a landscaped garden by Dutch designer Piet Oudolf, dotted with sculptures by artists including Louise Bourgeois, Eduardo Chillida and Joan Miró, as well as a gallery shop and a restaurant.

Luis Alejandre, a retired Spanish general who is the president of the Isla del Rey volunteer foundation, said that Hauser & Wirth invested approximately 4 million euros (S$6.44 million) in its project.

Hauser & Wirth Menorca was "just the kind of project we have long been looking for", said Hector Pons, the mayor of Mahon.

It would attract more up-market visitors to the area, he added, noting that Menorca is already a popular destination for yachting.

But he also mentioned that Hauser & Wirth's Somerset project had created a local property squeeze there, and that the gallery's arrival had already had an effect on the housing market on Menorca.

"We have seen a noticeable rise in sales to foreigners looking for secondary homes," he said. However, the Swiss dealers said they also wanted the Menorca centre to be embraced by local residents, so visitors can reach it by a special ferry service and entrance to the site itself is free.

The Menorca art centre is opening a year behind schedule, and at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic continues to cast a shadow over tourism.

On Monday, the same day Hauser & Wirth opened its doors to the public, Britain reintroduced a quarantine for travellers returning from Menorca and Spain's other Balearic Islands, following a recent uptick in coronavirus cases.

For last weekend's private inauguration, Hauser & Wirth invited about 500 people.

"We would have loved to celebrate more," Iwan Wirth said.

"But we also don't want this place to be an Ibiza," he added. "This is not going to be a party island."

The so-called Big Four mega-galleries - Hauser & Wirth, Gagosian, White Cube and Pace - have, over the past decade, been setting up branded branches in locations wherever wealth is made or spent - whether it be Hong Kong or the Hamptons, Seoul or St Moritz, Switzerland.

Among these mega-galleries, "Hauser & Wirth has taken a lead by aggressively expanding its programme to include distinguished female and Black artists," said Clayton Press, a New Jersey-based collector who also teaches at New York University.

The Menorca centre opened with a show by Mark Bradford, a prominent Black artist from Los Angeles who first exhibited in Hauser & Wirth's Zurich gallery in 2014.

For the Menorca show, "Masses and Movements", he produced a series of paintings and sculptures based on 16th-century maps, addressing issues such as migration and the legacy of colonialism.

He initially refused Hauser & Wirth's offer to exhibit in Menorca, particularly when it looked unlikely that he would be able to travel from the United States to supervise the show's installation.

But he was thrilled to have changed his mind, he said, after Spain allowed vaccinated Americans to enter the country. In June, he held a workshop with local art students on Isla del Rey, and work produced from the session is included in the show.

Bradford's works had all been presold to institutions before the Saturday opening, Mr Wirth said.

"Hauser & Wirth are very good at getting institutions to buy their works, and that's a big draw to artists," said Wendy Goldsmith, a London-based art adviser.

In May, the gallery also exhibited for the first time Guyana-born British painter Frank Bowling, who in October switched to the Swiss dealership from the Hales Gallery in London.

Christina Quarles, Cindy Sherman and Gary Simmons have also joined the Hauser & Wirth stable in the past 12 months, said Ms Kinsman. Hauser & Wirth now represents 93 artists or their estates, she added.

Mr Wirth said his family business stood out among other supersized galleries because of its decentralised business model.

"After the war, American galleries have dominated the art world in a New York-centric way, and their locations were outlets," he said. "Our locations are not outlets: They are locally run and organised." NYTIMES