What began with the takeover of his brother Alexander's collection developed into a long-standing commitment to contemporary art. With the Daros Collection and the Daros Latinamerica Collection, two collections of international standing came into being. While the Daros Collection continues to unfold its presence in the world's most important museums and exhibitions to this day, the Daros Latinamerica Collection found a new institutional home with its transfer to the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA).
Daros Collection
After his brother Alexander’s early death, Stephan Schmidheiny began from 1995 onwards to take an active role in shaping the former’s art collection. He took the conscious decision to have the collection run in an entrepreneurial manner, ensuring that it would be managed in future within a professional structure, namely Daros. The Daros Collection is thus an evolutionary project to some degree: the goal is for it to develop in line with the Zeitgeist and the works of art it brings together, rather than merely standing still.
The Daros Collection currently comprises some 250 pieces, including outstanding works by Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, Brice Marden, Willem de Kooning and Cy Twombly. There are also impressive groups of works by Mark Rothko, Robert Ryman, Barnett Newman, Sigmar Polke, Bruce Nauman, Robert Gober, Christopher Wool and Thomas Schütte.
In addition to ensuring that the management of the foundation remains keenly focused, Daros has for many years placed great emphasis on making the works accessible to the general public. Initially it used its own premises in Zurich for this purpose, and between 2001 and 2008 Daros displayed selected works from the collection in various temporary exhibitions. Regular loans to renowned museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Modern in London are testament to the outstanding quality of the collection.
Since 2010, the Daros Collection has been working together closely with the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, with individual groups of works from the collection being put on display at the Fondation Beyeler.
Tate Modern – Art in the Industrial Wasteland
On a murky November day in the early 1990s, Lord Dennis Stevenson showed Stephan Schmidheiny a derelict power station on London's Bankside, and outlined the vision that he as Chairman of the Tate Gallery had developed together with its Director, Sir Nicholas Serota: the run-down area was to become home to a unique museum of modern art. Stephan Schmidheiny shared his enthusiasm, and was one of the first to support the project with a substantial donation, so laying the foundations for one of the most important cultural buildings in the UK.
The Tate Modern, which opened in 2000, now attracts five million visitors every year, making it the most popular museum of modern and contemporary art in the world. Stephan Schmidheiny also provided major support for the Switch House extension, which was opened in June 2016 and has virtually doubled the gallery space.
Daros Latinamerica Collection
In the course of Stephan Schmidheiny's engagement in Latin America, contemporary Latin American art also became into focus at Daros at the end of the 1990s. It soon became apparent that the Latin American collection would develop better in a separate context. Accordingly, the Daros Latinamerica Collection, independent of the Daros Collection, was founded in 2000. The collection is one of the most comprehensive private collections of contemporary Latin American art.
The Daros Latinamerica Collection was owned by Ruth Schmidheiny, Stephan Schmidheiny's first wife. It comprises over 1,200 works by 117 Latin American artists. The works in the Daros Latinamerica Collection have been exhibited in dedicated museums and on loan to renowned institutions around the globe.
Following the untimely death of Ruth Schmidheiny in 2019, the works in the Daros Latinamerica Collection found a new home at the end of 2025 in the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (Malba) in Argentina. The museum's founder, Argentine entrepreneur and collector Eduardo F. Costantini, acquired the entire collection and will integrate it into the museum's permanent collection in 2026, marking the museum's 25th anniversary.