Since it was founded in 1992 the Galerie Urs Meile has been internationally engaged in the presentation and dissemination of contemporary art in the media of painting, sculpture, photography, installation and performance. The gallery operates out of two locations: Lucerne (Switzerland) and Beijing (China). While the operating centre is based in Switzerland, the Beijing branch – set in the middle of the artist and gallery quarter Caochangdi – has established itself as an international meeting place for collectors, curators and aficionados of the arts. The complex designed by Ai Weiwei contains four spacious exhibition rooms within six buildings, and houses the artist-in-residence programme initiated by the gallery.

The artistic programme contains established as well as up-and-coming young artists from China, Europe and the U.S.A. As one of the first galleries worldwide to do so, since its first contact in the middle of the 1990s, the Galerie Urs Meile has also been intensively involved in the Chinese contemporary art scene, whose protagonists now participate in the discourse on contemporary visual art at the highest international level. In recent years, the gallery has enduringly fostered the careers of some of the most influential Chinese artists working today.