LUMA Foundation is a nonprofit organization established in 2004 that is based out of Zurich, Switzerland. It supports the activities of independent contemporary artists and other pioneers working in the fields of art, photography, publishing, documentary, and multimedia.
Established by Maja Hoffmann, the foundation promotes artistic projects combining a particular interest in environmental issues, human rights, education, [1] and culture in the broadest sense. [2]
In 2011, the LUMA Foundation launched an acquisition program of books and films for its future library and hosted a symposium in Arles entitled The Human Snapshot, which brought together a number of leading thinkers to discuss the photographic image and its impact on human rights.
The LUMA Foundation's focus is to create an experimental cultural complex, the Parc des Ateliers in Arles, France, [3] dedicated to the production of exhibitions and ideas and developed with architect Frank Gehry. [4] [5] This project envisions an interdisciplinary center for the production of art exhibitions, research, education and archives. [6]
POOL is an innovative program that combines the collaboration of an international group of private collectors with a mentor-based training programme for art curators. The programme has been conceived by Beatrix Ruf, (Director and Curator, Kunsthalle Zürich 2001-2014) in collaboration with the founding collectors Maja Hoffmann and Michael Ringier. [7]
LUMA Arles, which launched formally in 2013, is dedicated to providing artists with opportunities to experiment in the production of new work through interdisciplinary collaboration. The conceptualisation of its mission, and the initial programming, has been spearheaded by Maja Hoffmann. It is an institution dedicated to providing artists with opportunities to experiment in the production and presentation of new work in close collaboration with other artists, curators, scientists, innovators and audiences. The opening programme in 2021 included work by 45 artists and designers and special new commissions for LUMA by international artists, such as Etel Adnan, Ólafur Elíasson, Koo Jeong A, Kapwani Kiwanga, Helen Marten, Pierre Huyghe, Carsten Höller, Philippe Parreno and Rirkrit Tiravanija. [8]
LUMA Arles works in collaboration with Actes Sud, a major French publishing house known for its work in the arts, humanities, and for children, and the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie, the first post-graduate program to specialise in photography in France. Every summer, LUMA Arles hosts installations and programs for the international photography festival, Rencontres d’Arles.
LUMA Days is LUMA Arles’ yearly forum of art and ideas where local and international experts, scientists, artists, thinkers, and activists converge with the general public to share ideas and experiences around topical issues. It attempts to bring together all the elements that compose the LUMA program with a week of public events, conferences, professional workshops, displays, and art installations. Each year, LUMA Days considers a socially impactful theme linked to the preoccupations of the LUMA foundation.
Sitting just outside Arles’s Roman city walls, [9] the centrepiece of the 27-acre LUMA Arles campus is the 15,000 sq ft (1,400 m2) [10] Arts Resource Centre building designed by Frank Gehry. It houses research and reference facilities, workshop and seminar rooms, and artist studios and presentation spaces. [11] Gehry’s initial design for two metallic towers met with considerable opposition and was subsequently rejected by France’s National Commission of Historical Monuments, on the grounds that the buildings would obscure views of the Alyscamps. In 2013, a second design in a different position on the north of the site—a single twisting tower with 13 levels and 11,000 reflective stainless-steel plates—was approved. [12]
LUMA Arles also encompasses six historic, large-scale industrial buildings. One historic building, the Grande Halle, was renovated in 2007 by the initiative of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region. Four other large-scale industrial buildings on the Luma Arles site, previously a manufacture and repair yard for the French national railway system, were refurbished by Annabelle Selldorf and are used for installations and artists’ residencies. [13]
The Foundation engages in long-term collaborations with institutions like the New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York), CCS Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, New York), Serpentine Gallery and Tate Modern (London), the Kunsthalle Zürich and the Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland). LUMA is a partner of Les Rencontres d’Arles Photographie Awards in Arles.
Frank Owen Gehry is a Canadian-born American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become world-renowned attractions.
Philippe Parreno is a French contemporary artist, living and working in Paris. His works include films, installations, performances, drawings, and text.
Anders Petersen is a Swedish photographer, based in Stockholm. He makes intimate and personal documentary-style black and white photographs. Petersen has published more than 20 books. He has had exhibitions at Bibliothèque nationale de France, Liljevalchs konsthall, MARTa Herford, and Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
Katerina Jebb is a British-born artist, photographer and film-maker.
The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize is awarded annually by the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation and the Photographers' Gallery to a photographer who has made the most significant contribution to the photographic medium in Europe during the past year.
Leigh Ledare uses photography, archival material, text and film to explore human agency, social relationships, taboos and the photographic in equal turns. Through a wide span of artistic practices, Ledare examines issues related to desire, identity, and morality.
W.M. Hunt is a photography collector, curator and consultant who lives and works in New York.
The Rencontres d'Arles is an annual summer photography festival founded in 1970 by the Arles photographer Lucien Clergue, the writer Michel Tournier and the historian Jean-Maurice Rouquette.
Smith is a French transdisciplinary artist-researcher. Smith experiments with and explores the links between contemporary humanity and its boundary figures - ghosts, mutants, hybrids - engaging his own body and that of his collaborators - writers, astronauts, shamans, engineers, designers, performers or composers - in indisciplinary projects. Disturbing genres, languages and disciplines, Smith proposes curious works, in the etymological sense of cura: curiosity and care for the world around us, the terrestrial and the celestial, the human and the non-human, the visible and the invisible, imagination and fiction. Thermal cameras, drones, neon lights, implantations of electronic chips and subcutaneous meteorites, atomic mutations or trance practices characterise his fluid work composed with technological and spiritual means that incorporate the dimensions of mystery and dream.
Maja Hoffmann is a Swiss art collector, art patron, documentary producer, impresario, and businesswoman. She is the founder and president of the LUMA Foundation. She is also part of the shareholder pool made up of descendants of the founder of the Roche Holding AG, which controls the Swiss health-care company Hoffmann-La Roche.
The Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation for Documentary Photography & Film is a non-profit private operating foundation headquartered in Rochester, New York. The foundation was established in 2010 by documentary photographer Manuel Rivera-Ortiz to support underrepresented photographers and filmmakers from less developed countries with grants, awards, exhibitions, and educational programs.
Indrė Šerpytytė is a Lithuanian artist living and working in London. Šerpytytė is concerned with the impact of war on history and perception, and works with photography, sculpture, installation and painting.
Asad Raza is an American artist who lives and works in New York, NY.
Simon Castets is a French-American curator serving as the Director of Strategic Initiatives of LUMA Arles, France since 2022. From 2013 to 2021, he was Director of Swiss Institute Contemporary Art New York, then its Executive Chair through 2022, and continues to serve on its Board as a Trustee.
Mohamed Bourouissa is an Algeria-born French photographer, based in Paris. In 2020 Bourouissa won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. His work is held in the collection of the Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris.
Oan Kim is a French photographer, video artist, and musician.
Clément Chéroux is a French photography historian and curator. He is Chief Curator of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He has also held senior curatorial positions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Chéroux has overseen many exhibitions and books on photographers and photography.
Eythar Gubara, is a Sudanese freelance photographer and activist for human rights. She is mainly known for her documentary images of everyday life in Sudan and of events during the Sudanese Revolution. In her work, she has placed a special focus on images of women, as well as on social diversity in Sudan.
Luma Arles is an arts center in Arles, France, featuring a 15,000 square meter tower building designed by the Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry for the LUMA Foundation. For the building Gehry took some of his inspiration from the post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh hoping to catch the light Dutch artist sought in the South of France, specifically as in Starry Night which was painted in Arles in 1889. The skin of the building features 11,000 angled reflective stainless steel panels.
Yann Gross is a Swiss photographer.
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