Myriam Ullens, who along with her husband, Guy, helped bring global attention to contemporary Chinese art, was shot and killed in a car outside her home in Lasne, Belgium, on the morning of March 29. She was seventy years old. According to several Belgian press organs, his son-in-law Nicholas was the shooter. Flemish news site TRV reported that the couple had been at odds “for years” over an inheritance issue, with Nicholas accusing his stepmother of squandering the Ullens’ fortune after Guy suffered a stroke. Ullens, who had been shot four times in the head, was pronounced dead at the scene. THE Daily Mail reports that Guy Ullens was shot in the leg during the incident.
Born in 1952, Ullens founded Happy House Kathmandu in 1993, a Nepalese organization supporting undernourished infants. She married Guy in 1999 and the couple have amassed a collection of around two thousand works. While many were by American and European artists, including Tracey Emin, Rashid Johnson, and JMW Turner, most were by contemporary Chinese artists, including Huang Yong Ping, Wang Jianwei, and Xu Zhen. In 2007, the Ullens auctioned off their Turner paintings to fund the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, which they launched in Beijing the following year. Now known as the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, the private museum has additional branches, in Beidaihe and Shanghai, and is considered one of China’s top contemporary art institutions. In 2017, the the museum has been sold to a group of Chinese investors led by private equity group Lunar Capital.
“Myriam Ullens’ vision and passion – her love for art, her belief in cultural exchange and her commitment to helping others – are at the heart of UCCA’s history and values,” said the UCCA director Philip Tinari in a statement. “We are shocked and saddened by her death, and we will remember her strength, style, creativity and generosity as we continue the work of the institution she and Guy so generously founded and nurtured. during its first decade.
