.svg)
Menu
Menu
From his theatre background to curating the UBS Digital Art Museum Hamburg and Art Dubai Digital, Ulrich shares how he bridges art, technology, and emotion. We talk about new audiences, hybrid works that connect physical and digital worlds, and how collecting is shifting from ownership to collaboration.
From theatre to VR to a 6,500-square-metre digital art museum opening next year in Hamburg: Ulrich Schrauth has spent his career building the infrastructure for immersive experience at scale. His conviction - that curiosity is a new currency - drives everything from the VRAM Biennial to the BFI London Film Festival's immersive strand to Art Dubai Digital 2025.
Ulrich Schrauth comes from theatre - specifically Thalia Theatre Hamburg and the Sydney Festival - and has built a career in immersive digital arts curatorial work that reflects that origin. He founded the VRAM Biennial Hamburg for VR and AR arts, curates the immersive and digital art strand at BFI London Film Festival, and serves as Artistic Director of the UBS Digital Art Museum Hamburg - opening next year with 6,500 square metres and a permanent TeamLab Borderless installation. He is co-curating Art Dubai Digital 2025 with Nadine Khalil, with a programme explicitly designed to centre digital art within the contemporary art canon rather than alongside it.
The institutional question for digital art is not whether it will be taken seriously - it will - but how the spaces and structures that support it need to be designed. Ulrich Schrauth's career is a series of answers to that question, each at a different scale. The VRAM Biennial built community for VR artists who lacked dedicated institutional support. The UBS Digital Art Museum will give immersive digital work the architectural ambition it deserves. Art Dubai Digital 2025's curatorial frame - centring digital work within contemporary art, not beside it - is the most explicit version of the argument he has been making across all of them.
Theatre as training for immersive digital curation
The skills that make great theatre - timing, spatial awareness, the design of experience rather than just display - transfer directly to immersive digital work. Schrauth's theatrical background gives him a framework for curatorial questions that most digital-native practitioners don't have.
UBS Digital Art Museum Hamburg
A 6,500-square-metre space with a permanent TeamLab Borderless installation is one of the most ambitious investments in digital art infrastructure anywhere in the world. Opening next year, it will establish Hamburg as a major destination for immersive digital art and set a new standard for what institutional ambition in the space looks like.
Art Dubai Digital 2025 and canonical inclusion
The curatorial argument Schrauth and Nadine Khalil are making at Art Dubai Digital 2025 - digital art belongs in the contemporary art canon, not adjacent to it - has institutional implications that extend well beyond the fair itself.
Artists: Libby Haney, Yalu, Osinaki
The artists Schrauth is working with - Libby Haney's quantum physics-informed AR/VR, Yalu's South Korean holograms, Osinaki's Word document portraits via Kate Vass Gallery - reflect the breadth of what "immersive digital art" contains when the curatorial frame is wide enough.
"Curiosity is a new currency. I feel people need to be curious. Our times are changing so rapidly."
The institutional infrastructure for digital art is being built right now - and the decisions being made about what gets built will shape what's available to collectors for decades. Ulrich Schrauth is making some of the most consequential of those decisions. Understanding what he's building, and why, gives you a clear view of where the serious institutional support for digital art is going.
Unlocked is the podcast by 100 collectors - the global network for digital art collectors. Each episode, we speak with artists, curators, collectors, and builders shaping the digital art world. No market speculation. No hype. Just honest, substantive conversations about art, practice, and what it means to collect today. New episodes release throughout the year. Find Unlocked on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 100 collectors is a membership network. [Explore membership →]
