Hauser & Wirth Menorca is an art center combining art, education and conservation in the natural setting of Illa del Rei, an island in Mahon harbor. The art center presents an exhibition program spanning ambitious new commissions by gallery artists across all media. Following a conservation project, Hauser & Wirth sensitively repurposed the existing 18th-century outbuildings of a naval hospital to create the 1,500 sq.m art center, which has welcomed over 180,000 visitors since it opened in 2021.
The exhibition space comprises eight galleries and an outdoor sculpture trail, which features works by Stefan Brüggemann, Gary Simmons, Eduardo Chillida and Pipilotti Rist. A garden by the acclaimed landscape designer Piet Oudolf runs alongside the gallery buildings, incorporating native perennials and plants suited to the Mediterranean climate. Adjacent to the gallery is Cantina, a lively eatery focusing on local produce. The outdoor restaurant offers a menu which pays homage to Menorcan cuisine, to be enjoyed under the shade of an live-tree forest. The gallery shop is found in the same building as Cantina, presenting art publications and crafts by local makers.
On occasion of ‘Eduardo Chillida 100 years’, ‘Chillida in Menorca’ celebrates the artist’s profound connection with the island through a major presentation of sculpture and works on paper, including several created in Menorca, where he spent his summers from 1989. Eduardo Chillida’s varied and pioneering practice reinterpreted the dialectic of solid and void and interior and exterior space. Featuring over 60 works spanning half a century from 1949 to 2000, the exhibition is accompanied by an Education Lab, developed in partnership with Chillida Leku and Menorca Preservation via its project Plastic Free Menorca.
The acclaimed New York-based artist Roni Horn, known for her conceptually oriented work, presents her first solo exhibition in Menorca, featuring a selection of sculptures and installations that interact with the historical gallery spaces and natural surroundings. Although varied in medium, all works derive from longstanding themes that have propelled Horn’s poetic study on the protean nature of identity, meaning and perception.
