Migros Museum for Contemporary Art

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Löwenbräu area after the renovation, here the museum has two floors in one part of the building

The Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zurich deals with exhibiting, collecting and conveying international contemporary art. It presents changing solo and group exhibitions as well as works from its own collection on two levels. The museum is located on the listed and converted Löwenbräu site at Limmatstrasse 270.

The museum is financed from funds from the Federation of Migros Cooperatives through the Migros Culture Percentage . The founding director Rein Wolfs worked at the museum from 1996 to 2001. Heike Munder has been director of the museum since 2001 .

History, collection and exhibition concept

The forerunner of the museum was the hall for international art , an industrial building that housed and exhibited the Migros collection from 1978 to 1981. After the industrial building was demolished, activities continued in different locations. In 1984 there was an exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich , in 1986 at the Musée Rath , Geneva and in 1994 at the Museo Cantonale d'Arte , Lugano. On May 4, 1996, today's Museum of Contemporary Art was founded, which is housed on the Löwenbräu site, which before its renovation had an exhibition area of ​​around 1300 m² and was to hold three to four temporary and special exhibitions a year. In the early 2000s, the art historian Claudia Hunziker-Keller wrote that Migros was trying to avoid too close a connection with art sponsorship . They see the company more as a patron and want to separate pure sponsorship from it. The initially so-called Museum of Contemporary Art was supposed to “appear completely independent of its sponsor” (former director Rein Wolfs in an interview). The renaming of the museum in Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst was not intended by Migros, but only an "adaptation to the general usage".

The Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst's collection owes its existence to the sponsorship of the entrepreneur Gottlieb Duttweiler , the founder of the Swiss retailer Migros, who began buying works of art by Swiss artists in 1957 on the recommendation of his advisor Hermann Gattinger, which were initially also used to decorate the Migros offices. The collection, which has grown over the years, goes far beyond the initial importance of the corporate collection, which was intended to promote local and national artists. As a museum collection, it is characterized in particular by the interaction and interlinking of the collecting and exhibition activities that have been carried out since 1996. That year the Migros Museum for Contemporary Art was founded. The programmatic orientation is characterized by a speed and flexibility in dealing with new positions, which at that time was primarily reserved for the art halls and art associations. The museum relies on productions in close cooperation with the artists and not on what has already been tried and tested. The exhibition and collection practices are closely interwoven and function according to the principle of a zipper: A large part of the collections result from the exhibitions. In addition to this characteristic connection, the collection is shaped by the different handwritings and interests of those responsible for the collection or museum management. While acquisitions in the 1970s concentrated on Minimal Art , German painting and Swiss positions, the focus in the last two decades has been on international contemporary art.

In its exhibitions with a focus on installation , performance and socio-political discourse, the museum would like to achieve sustainable art mediation. Particular emphasis is placed on the spatial and physical as well as the intellectual experience of the art on display. According to its own presentation, the museum strives for an “experience-based art mediation” and thus a “connection between art and the personal everyday life” of the visitors.

Artists represented in the collection

The following list names a selection of artists and their work (as of 2008):

  • Maurizio Cattelan : If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around it, does it make a sound? (1998, stuffed donkey with a television set on its back) and La rivoluzione siamo noi (2000, wax figure, dressed in a felt suit, hung on a cloakroom)
  • Spartacus Chetwynd : The fall of a man, a puppet extravaganza (2006, variable room installation with different materials) and Walk to Dover (2005/07, video projection)
  • Christoph Büchel : Minus (2002, room installation with concert equipment, lighting system, concert-specific garbage), An oval office tour with President George W. Bush (2003, video) and AKE 0453 PE (2006, room installation)
  • Urs Fischer : Ladder (1997, aluminum ladder, acrylic paint and spotlights), Frozen (1998, room installation, consisting of a wooden table, chairs , emulsion paint , candles, branches, wool, glass, paper and ceramics), More sweet feelings worries and other stuff , ( 1998/99, wall object made of ink, pencil, synthetic resin, felt pen, spray paint, adhesive tape, paper, cardboard, wood) and glass cat sex transparent tale (2000, room installation, wood, chipboard, acrylic glass boxes, silicone, acrylic fars, felt pen and spotlights)
  • There are nine works by Douglas Gordon in the Migros collection. including five video projections, a wall text with the title Instruction. Number 3A (1993), the room installation Reading room (1996), a color photo Tattoo (for reflection) (1997) and a sound room installation What you want me to say (1998, record player with three amplifiers, 12 boxes of cabling, record and splitter )
  • Rachel Harrison : Trees for the forest (2007, variable room installation made up of cubes of different sizes made from different materials)
  • Mark Leckey : Two video projections: The march of the big white barbarians (2006) and Parade (2003)
  • Rirkrit Tiravanija : Untitled (Bon voyage Monsieur Ackermann) (1995, room installation and three-channel video projection, converted Opel Commodore GS car with a galley in the trunk, three video cameras and three monitors with iron frames) and Untitled, 2000 (Parrot No. 1) (2000, stuffed parrot in a cage, wood)
  • Christoph Schlingensief : Kaprow City (2006/07, room installation made of various materials)

The collection also includes numerous works by the forerunners of these artists. Including Marc Camille Chaimowicz , Stephen Willats , Katharina Sieverding and Paul Thek . Installation art, as well as works that deal with spatial constructions, performance or socio-political issues, are of particular importance in the Migros Museum for Contemporary Art. The collection grew steadily under the museum directors Urs Raussmüller 1976–1985, Jacqueline Burckhardt 1986–1990, Rein Wolfs 1991–2001 and since 2001 under the direction of Heike Munder.

literature

Web links

Commons : Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Migros-Genossenschafts-Bund (Ed.): Chronicle of Migros. Portrait of a dynamic company , Zurich 2013, p. 84
  2. ↑ Claudia Hunziker-Keller in: Katja Girschik, Albrecht Ritschl, Thomas Welskopp (eds.): The Migros Kosmos: On the history of an extraordinary Swiss company , here + now, Verlag für Kultur und Geschichte, Baden 2003, ISBN 3-906419- 64-9 , pp. 254 to 257
  3. ^ Website of the museum, text by Heike Munder and Judith Welter
  4. ↑ Presentation on the museum's website
  5. ^ Collection , exhibition catalog of the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich 1978 to 2008, p. 305 ff.


Coordinates: 47 ° 23 '21.7 "  N , 8 ° 31' 29.4"  E ; CH1903:  six hundred and eighty-two thousand and twelve  /  two hundred and forty-nine thousand two hundred and ninety-four