Coninx Museum

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The Coninx Museum on Heuelstrasse in Zurich-Hottingen (June 2011)

The Coninx Museum was an art museum in Zurich - Hottingen . It housed around 14,000 works of art from the Coninx Foundation, which go back to the painter and art collector Werner Coninx . It is one of the largest private art collections in Switzerland . The museum closed in 2012.

history

Coninx built up his collection between 1945 and 1980. It included figurative Swiss art of the 19th and 20th centuries, international prints , old masters, as well as African tribal and Far Eastern art. This collection was transferred to the Coninx Foundation in 1973. It has been called the Werner Coninx Foundation since 2016.

From 1986, the museum was located in Werner Coninx's former home on Heuelstrasse on the Zürichberg, which the father of the founder Otto Coninx-Girardet had built in 1912 according to plans by Pflegehard and Haefeli . The listed building was rebuilt after the exhibition in winter 2005/2006 and reopened at the end of 2009. The museum showed a total of 14 exhibitions between 1986 and 2011; thereafter the museum was closed for financial reasons. The core holdings of the collection have since been made available to various Swiss museums on permanent loan.

Since 1990

The Coninx Foundation has hit the headlines on various occasions in recent years because objects from the collection were offered at art auctions. The foundation president Ernst Hefti was therefore accused of disregarding the foundation's purpose; Hefti, on the other hand, took the position that the objects in question were not central to the collection and that sales were indispensable for raising funds. A lawsuit brought by Werner Coninx's children in connection with the sale of old masters in 1995 was ruled in favor of the foundation president by the federal court . In connection with the auctioning of an important Buddha statue in March 2008, however, criticism of the administration of the foundation president was again expressed, namely in the Tages-Anzeiger , whose publishing house Tamedia is controlled by the Coninx family.

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung showed more understanding for the approach of the Board of Trustees . Werner Coninx provided his foundation with an extensive collection and valuable property, but with little cash. In addition, the collection contains only a few outstanding works and a limited exhibition space, which is why the museum can generate little money from admissions and sponsorship. At the same time, however, high costs were incurred for the renovation of the listed villa on the Zürichberg. The sale of parts of the collection - approved by the Federal Foundation Supervisory Authority - was therefore the only way of obtaining the necessary funds.

In spring 2011 it became known that the Coninx Museum would move to the Hänggiturm in Glarus and offer the villa on Heuelstrasse for sale in order to refurbish the foundation financially and to have more space for exhibitions. At the end of 2012, a committee was founded to announce resistance to these plans, with the support of prominent members of Zurich politics (such as the Council of States Verena Diener , Felix Gutzwiller and ex-Government Councilor Markus Notter ), the art historian Jacqueline Burckhardt , the art collector Eberhard W. Kornfeld and the family of the collection founder. The Weltwoche accused the Foundation President, in this connection, to have rent-free for several years lived in the apartment upstairs of the museum building to obtain an unusually high salary and to have chosen his son to the Board.

At the end of 2013, Die Südostschweiz reported that the foundation council's project to move the Coninx Museum to Glarus had failed, in particular due to the requirements of the Swiss foundation supervision. In addition, the foundation supervision commissioned a committee of experts to investigate the situation of the Coninx Foundation. As a result, the entire Board of Trustees resigned in early 2014. In mid-January 2014, the Zurich lawyer Harold Grüninger was a trustee used to evaluate members of a new Board of Trustees.

The descendants of Coninx are not represented on the board of trustees of the Werner Coninx Foundation. They were "repeatedly of the opinion that the procedure of the former board of trustees was not in the interests of the founder".

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ sda: The Bündner Kunstmuseum receives Coninx on permanent loan. In: nzz.ch. May 9, 2018, accessed May 26, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from June 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Reopening November 13, 2009  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.coninx-museum.ch
  3. ↑ Werner Coninx Foundation - the path to the future Werner Coninx Foundation, accessed on May 26, 2019.
  4. ↑ Does the Coninx Museum sell its silverware? ( Memento of April 23, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Tages-Anzeiger , March 19, 2008.
  5. ↑ Urs Steiner: File number C as in Coninx unsolved. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. January 27, 2010, accessed July 3, 2013 .
  6. ^ A b Philipp Meier: Coninx Museum moves to Glarus: Villa on Zürichberg is to be sold. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. April 21, 2011, accessed July 3, 2013 .
  7. ^ Rupen Boyadjian: Committee defends itself against the move of the Coninx collection. In: Tages-Anzeiger. December 2, 2012, accessed June 29, 2013 .
  8. ↑ Rico Bandle: Charitable private matter. (No longer available online.) In: Weltwoche. May 12, 2011, archived from the original on January 8, 2014 ; Retrieved July 3, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.weltwoche.ch
  9. ↑ The Coninx collection does not move to Glarus. . Southeastern Switzerland, December 22, 2013.
  10. ↑ Philipp Meier: Last act of a long tragedy? Board of Trustees of the Coninx Foundation resigns. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, January 7, 2014.
  11. ↑ New administrator for the Zurich Coninx Foundation. Tages-Anzeiger, January 21, 2014.
  12. ↑ Philipp Meier: Last act of a long tragedy? In: nzz.ch. January 7, 2014, accessed May 26, 2019 .

Web links

Commons : Coninx Museum  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 47 ° 22 '8.9 "  N , 8 ° 33' 59.5"  E ; CH1903:  six hundred eighty-five thousand one hundred and ninety-two  /  247091