The Verbier Art Summit membership platform is an international group of visionaries in the art world. Coming from diverse backgrounds and interests, their shared goal is to drive social change through art.
Membership Platform
The Verbier Art Summit membership platform comes together – by invitation only – in Verbier, Switzerland, for a weekend of innovation.
The annual programme is organised in partnership with an acclaimed museum director each year around urgent themes at the intersection of art and society.
2025 Summit
QUARTER LIFE CRISIS.
Art in a World on the Brink.
"We find ourselves, already, a quarter of the way through the twenty-first century. In these two and a half decades, art, along with the larger world in which it functions, has undergone wave upon wave of fundamental, irreversible change."
Philip Tinari
Director and Chief Executive of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art
2021 & 2022
Virtual Summits
Resource Hungry:
Our Cultured Landscape and its
Ecological Impact
"Awareness of environmental issues is essential to our life on Earth. We are the virus, but also the only vaccine that exists to slow down climate change."
Jean-Paul Felley
Summit’s Academic Director
Director of EDHEA
2020 Summit
Resource Hungry:
Our Cultured Landscape and its
Ecological Impact
"There are small and large gestures we can all make. This is a moment to reflect on doing less, better and for longer."
Jessica Morgan
Nathalie de Gunzburg Director
Dia Art Foundation
2019 Summit
We are Many.
Art, the Political and Multiple Truths.
“Art muses on the unknown and thrives on inventing signs for phenomena or things we have not yet named. It can do this because it naturally joins thinking with doing, reflection with action. Art is grounded on imagination, and only through imagination will we be able to find new ways into the future.”
Jochen Volz
Museum Director
Pinacoteca de São Paulo
2018 Summit
More than Real.
Art in the Digital Age.
“Technology will change art in the most fundamental way. As Walter Benjamin said, it is art's task to create a demand which can be fully satisfied only later. I believe that some artists can be said to anticipate the digital possibilities that are being developed with such speed today. For instance, was Salvador Dalí already thinking in terms of virtual reality?”
Daniel Birnbaum
2017 Summit
Size Matters! (De)Growth of the 21st Century Art Museum.
“Whenever there is a question for growing, sizing up, the question of architectural sizing up swell, there is the question of what qualities we might gain and what qualities we stand to lose?”
Beatrix Ruf
Who will you meet?
principal members
Principal Members serve as leaders in the art world and the Verbier Art Summit membership platform. Principal Members contribute to the Verbier Art Summit by supporting the participation of Shaper Members. Each Principal Membership funds a Shaper Membership as an honored guest, which may be a past speaker, museum professional, artist, scholar, or other key influencer. Principal Members collaborate with the Summit team to enable these invitations.
Marie-Louise Albada Jelgersma
Dakis Joannou
Renée Drake
Frances Reynolds
founding members
Founding Members are predominantly residents of Verbier (on either a permanent or seasonal basis) and are all intricately involved in art as private collectors, artists or art consultants. They “host” the Verbier Art Summit by inviting art world stakeholders to exclusive moderated art debates, exclusive lunches or dinners, and even provide housing to the speakers in their beautiful chalets.
Catherine Barré
Helena & Martin Bjäringer
Séverine & Hubert Bonnet
Ute & Maarten Esser
Paula & Robert Fentener van Vlissingen
Marie-Claude & Charles Firmenich
Domenique Forsberg & Caspar Schübbe
Lena & Per Josefsson
Charles de Pauw
Jean-Edouard van Praet d'Amerloo & Harry Tappan Heher
Marie-Hélène de Torrenté
honorary members
Artists, museum directors, curators, academics, political figures, writers and innovation leaders. They have contributed to the Verbier Art Summit as speakers, moderators, curators or honored guests.
Allora & Calzadilla
Karen Archey
Ed Atkins
Maria Balshaw
Lars Bang Larsen
Tom Battin
Dave Beech
Daniel Birnbaum
Irma Boom
Andrea Bowers
Benjamin Bratton
Tania Bruguera
Federico Campagna
Claudia Comte
Douglas Coupland
Simon Denny
Elvira Dyangani Ose
Torkwase Dyson
Latifa Echakhch
Olafur Eliasson
Mark Fisher
Louise O. Fresco
Cissie Fu
Dominique Gonzales-Foerster
Dorothea von Hantelmann
Barbara Hendricks
Joan Jonas
Stefan Kaegi
Grada Kilomba
Rem Koolhaas
Ailton Krenak
Adrian Lahoud
Tobias Madison
Jessica Morgan
HRH Prince Constantijn of the Netherlands
Ernesto Neto
Gabi Ngcobo
Susanne Pfeffer
Philippe Rahm
Lucie Raven
Djamila Ribeiro
Pamela Rosenkranz
Beatrix Ruf
Tino Sehgal
Nicholas Serota
Wolf Singer
Boaventura de Sousa Santos
Paul Spies
Naine Terena
Rirkrit Tiravanija
El Ultimo Grito
Dado Valentic
Gonzalo Vargas Llosa
Paul Verschure
Jochen Volz
Anicka Yi
Lena Josefsson
Art Collector
Founding Member
It was inspiring to dig into a topic in refreshing, relaxed, and small groups. The backdrop of the gorgeous alpine landscape is in itself inspiring.
Wolf Singer
Professor of Neurophysiology
2019 Summit Speaker
I surely had high expectations, but the reality surpassed my imagination.
Géraldine Zeuner
Head Culture & Development
of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
The quality of the discussions, the atmosphere and the mutual respect between people made it a very nice experience for reflection and change.
