The new work is a continuation of a project Leibovitz began over fifteen years ago, when she published a book of portraits made in collaboration with Susan Sontag. That book, Women, was accompanied by an exhibition that opened at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Women is Leibovitz’s most enduringly popular series of photographs and she has long wanted to expand her exploration of the subject. The new portraits, in an exhibition also to be called Women, will reflect the changes in the roles of women today.
Aligned with the focus UBS places on education, learning programmes will accompany the exhibition presented in partnership with cultural organizations around the world. These initiatives will explore ways of seeing through photography, working with young people in local communities.
The new photographs will form part of the UBS Art Collection – one of the world's most important corporate collections of contemporary art comprising more than 30,000 works.
Annie Leibovitz (b. 1949) has been making witty, powerful images documenting popular culture since the early 1970s, when her work began appearing in Rolling Stone. She became the magazine's chief photographer in 1973, and ten years later began working for Vanity Fair and then Vogue. Her large and distinguished body of work encompasses some of the most well-known portraits of our time. Exhibitions of Leibovitz’s work have been shown at museums and galleries around the world including the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.; the International Center of Photography in New York; the Brooklyn Museum; the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam; the National Portrait Gallery in London; and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. Her work is held in museum collections from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C. to the National Portrait Gallery in London. She has published several collections of photographs and is the recipient of many honors. In 2006 she was made a Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. In 2009, she received the International Center of Photography’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the first Creative Excellence Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors, and the Centenary Medal of the Royal Photographic Society in London. In 2012, she was the recipient of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art Award to Distinguished Women in the Arts and the Wexner Prize. In 2013 she received the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities. She has been designated a Living Legend by the Library of Congress.
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ:
WOMEN
Commissioning Partner UBS
www.ubs.com/annieleibovitz
Press Enquiries:
Tamsin Selby, Communications, UBS
Tel +44-20-7567-3313 | Mobile +44-7876393334 | Email Tamsin.selby@ubs.com
Notes to editors:
UBS and Contemporary Art
UBS, a global financial services firm, has a long and substantial record of engagement in contemporary art, and actively enables clients and audiences to participate in the international conversation about art through its contemporary art platform. UBS provides long-term global support to the premier international Art Basel shows in Basel, Miami Beach and Hong Kong, for which the firm serves as global Lead Partner, as well as to the Guggenheim UBS MAP global partnership with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation. At the core of UBS’s involvement in contemporary art is the UBS Art Collection, widely recognized as one of the most important corporate contemporary art collections in the world. The collection comprises more than 30,000 objects including paintings, photographs, drawings, prints, video art and sculptures by artists representing the last 50 years. Works from the collection are installed in 837 UBS buildings in 56 countries around the world. UBS also regularly loans works to many international museums to provide greater public access to its collection. The contemporary photography collection incorporates work by Tina Barney; Candida Hofer; Pipolotti Rist; Cindy Sherman; and Sam Taylor Wood, amongst others. Recent acquisitions include work by Thomas Demand. UBS Curators and the UBS Art Board determine the location and usage of all new acquisitions to the collection.
www.ubs.com/art
www.ubs.com/artcollection
Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan, Italy and UBS present Don’t Shoot the Painter: Paintings from the UBS Art Collection until 4 October 2015 www.ubs.com/thepainter
Lucian Freud, A closer Look. Works from the UBS Art Collection, 3 September – 29 November 2015 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark
Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative: Under the Same Sun, Museo Jumex, Mexico City, 19 November 2015 - 7th of February 2016
Art Basel Miami Beach, 3 – 6 December 2015
