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Life in Progress
  • Published: 6 January 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241712207
  • Imprint: Allen Lane
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 160
  • RRP: $49.99
Categories:

Life in Progress

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Hardback
6 Jan 2026
EBook
2 Oct 2025
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World-renowned curator Hans Ulrich Obrist for the first time grants a private view of how a near-death experience in young childhood catapulted him towards art and artists

When Hans Ulrich was a young boy, he was knocked down by a speeding car. Hospitalized for weeks, he discovered the healing powers of art. Once he was able to travel again, he began to set out alone, on night trains, to meet artists in their studios across Europe.

From these early youthful encounters with the art world to his first exhibition in his Zurich kitchen, and even penning 250 postcards while trapped by an avalanche in Val Bregaglia, Obrist takes us through the formative experiences that made him.

Part unputdownable coming-of-age story, part tour de force of the contemporary art world, part user’s manual on how to live driven by curiosity, conversation, and not least hope, Life in Progress is an enchanting ode to what engaging with art and the people around us boundlessly affords.
  • Published: 6 January 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241712207
  • Imprint: Allen Lane
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 160
  • RRP: $49.99
Categories:

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140 Artists' Ideas for Planet Earth
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Sharp Tongues, Loose Lips, Open Eyes, Ears to the Ground
Ways of Curating
Ai Weiwei Speaks
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Praise for Life in Progress

Hans Ulrich Obrist manages to underline the value of art, to single it out from other human endeavours as something of paramount importance; to this, he brings an instinctive and profound love, a generosity of spirit (and heart) that he extends also to other fields of human expression

Etel Adnan

He is a passionate communicator. In result, half the world is starting to live in the future now

Yoko Ono

His words come out in an almost comical torrent, citations bobbing up and ideas colliding... 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

Life In Progress invites us to discover the person behind the polymath … Art is the gateway to possibility, Obrist believes, and his aim, it would seem, is to chivvy the rest of us through it

The Times

In his memoir, Obrist reveals a poignant motive for all his busyness. When he was six-years old, he was hit by a car on his way to school. He spent weeks hovering between life and death in hospital. "I just remember that the feeling of urgency started there, that there is no time to lose, every day could be your last"

Financial Times