The intimate, inspiring memoir of a “curator extraordinaire” (The Guardian)—part unputdownable coming-of-age story, part insider’s tour of the contemporary art world, part user’s manual on how to live a life driven by curiosity, conversation, and coincidence
“A few years ago, ArtReview named him the most powerful figure in the field, but Obrist . . . seems less to stand atop the art world than to race around, up, over, and through it.”—The New Yorker
When Hans Ulrich Obrist was six years old, he was knocked down by a speeding car as he was crossing the street. The weeks he spent recovering in the hospital instilled a sense of urgency in him—and opened his eyes to the healing powers of art. By 1985, when he was sixteen, he was making pilgrimages to artists’ studios, traveling across Europe on night trains. Before long, he was visiting hundreds each year.
Today recognized as one of the most influential figures in the global art world, Obrist is famed for his “terrifying work ethic” (Financial Times), having curated more than 350 exhibitions, recorded more than 2,000 hours of interviews with artists, and mounted 24-hour “marathon” cultural events at London’s Serpentine Galleries.
In Life in Progress, Obrist takes us through the formative experiences that made him into the art world legend he is today. As an inquisitive child in a small Swiss town in the 1970s, he found refuge in books; as a university student, he curated his first-ever exhibition—hosted in his kitchen and attended by no more than thirty people—and sent 250 postcards to strangers across the art world when he was stranded by an avalanche. Later, when he took over the Serpentine Galleries in London, he pushed the boundaries of what—and who—museums are for, by bringing art outside the four walls of the gallery.
Featuring encounters with giants of the art scene from Gerhard Richter and Louise Bourgeois to Etel Adnan and Agnes Varda, Life in Progress is an enchanting and deeply personal ode to art, the people who make it, and its capacity to change lives.
Cover image © 2026 Alex Katz / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
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