page_title: Pontus Hultén
section_title: Later career
hierarchical_section_title: Pontus Hultén / Biography / Later career
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: L'architetto Gae Aulenti con Pontus Hulten a Palazzo Grassi di Venezia nel 1986
context_page_description: Karl Gunnar Vougt Pontus Hultén was a Swedish art collector and museum director. Pontus Hultén is regarded as one of the most distinguished museum professionals of the twentieth century. He was the pioneering former head of the Museum for modern art in Stockholm and in the 1970s he was invited to participate in the creation of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, where he was its first director in 1974–1981.
context_section_description: Hultén's career after Centre Pompidou reflected the same commitment to working closely with artists that has caused so many to remember him fondly. Invited by Robert Irwin and Sam Francis to establish the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). Hultén went to Los Angeles in 1980, but, after four years of infrequent exhibitions and much fundraising, returned to Europe. In 1984–1990, he was in charge of Palazzo Grassi in Venice, and in 1985, he founded, along with Daniel Buren, Serge Fauchereau, and Sarkis, the Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques in Paris, which Hultén described as a cross between the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College. In 1991–1995, Hultén was the artistic director of the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Bonn. He later became the director of the Jean Tinguely Museum in Basel, where he curated the inaugural exhibition. Of Pontus Hultén, Niki de Saint Phalle once said, "[he had] the soul of an artist, not of a museum director."
  Pontus Hultén is also known for selling exhibition copies of Andy Warhol's boxes. These boxes were copies created around 1990, in the south of Sweden, on the direction of Pontus Hultén which he later sold for millions. Some were also given (donated) to the Swedish Modern Museum. These boxes have recently been "downgraded" by The Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board.
caption: Hulten with Gae Aulenti (Venice, 1986)
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