Museums in Basel
A number of museums in the city of Basel and its catchment area are grouped together as museums in Basel . They cover a wide range of collections , with a focus on the fine arts . They house numerous collections of international importance. At least three dozen houses, not counting the local history collections in the suburbs , represent an extraordinarily high museum density in comparison with urban regions of a similar size. They have around one and a half million visitors annually.
The museums, which make up an essential part of Basel's culture and cultural policy that creates identity , are based on closely interwoven private and state collection activities and cultural funding that go back to the 16th century. The state museums of the canton of Basel-Stadt emerged from the purchase of the private Amerbach cabinet by the city and the University of Basel in 1661, making them the oldest continuously existing museum collection of a bourgeois community. Since the 1980s, several collections have been made accessible in new buildings that have become known as avant-garde museum architecture.
Museum landscape
The focus of the collection of the Basel museums is on the fine arts - painting, drawing and sculpture. More than a dozen museums cover a spectrum that extends from ancient times to the present and shows both historical and established as well as pioneering art. The latter in particular has been made accessible in newly opened museums over the past two decades. Local and regional holdings are present, but an important characteristic of the large houses in particular is their international orientation and charisma. This is due to a long collection tradition that, unlike many other Central European museums, has not been affected by the wars of the 20th century, as well as the traditionally good networking of Basel as a location with the art dealer and collector market , for example through Art Basel .
Kunstmuseum Basel; Painting and drawing by Upper Rhine artists from the 14th to 16th centuries, art from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Antikenmuseum Basel and the Ludwig Collection; ancient art and culture of the Mediterranean
Museum for Contemporary Art and Media Art Industry [plug.in]; contemporary avant-garde art from the 1960s to the present
Beyeler Foundation ; classic modernism of the 20th century
Numerous museums deal with a wide variety of cultural-historical and ethnological topics. There are also technical and scientific collections. The museums are still oriented towards the scientific tasks of collecting, preserving and exhibiting, as well as research and education, or at least understand these as part of their work. As elsewhere, however, the traditional self-image has dissolved since the 1960s. In addition to the new forms of public contact ( museum education or didactics), mixed institutional forms have emerged that actively strive for a socio-politically relevant role and in which the museum business only forms one, albeit important, facet of a more comprehensive cultural business.
Museum of Cultures Basel; European and non-European ethnology (Tibet, Bali, South Pacific, ancient America)
Swiss Paper Museum - Basel Paper Mill; Paper production and writing culture
Natural History Museum Basel; Zoology, Entomology, Mineralogy, Anthropology, Osteology and Paleontology
S AM Swiss Architecture Museum in the Kunsthalle Basel; international architecture and urbanism of the present
The border location of the city at the Basel tri-border region and the small-scale structure of the Basel region will bring it about that while the main part of Basel's museums in the city of Basel and thus in the canton of Basel-Stadt is, some museums but in the canton of Basel-Land can be found . Museums in the Basel agglomeration can also be counted as part of the Basel museum landscape , such as those in the neighboring cities of Lörrach , Saint-Louis and Weil am Rhein , which in the case of the Weiler Vitra Design Museum are also regularly included in the annual Basel Museum Night . In view of the municipal, regional and national administrative units that meet here, as well as the overlying agglomeration, there is no clearly definable number of Basel museums, but even with a narrow perimeter there are at least three dozen houses that house collections and make them accessible. The Basel museums are also affiliated with the German-French-Swiss “ Museums-PASS-Musées ”, which was introduced in 1999 ; However, this is much broader than the Basel region and extends via Strasbourg to Mannheim .
Dreiländermuseum in Lörrach; Past and present of the three-country region
Toy museum, village and vine growing museum in Riehen; Toys, everyday life in the village and viticulture
Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein; Furniture design and architecture
Roman house in Augusta Raurica; Finds of the Roman city and archaeological park
Museum architecture gained in importance with the increasing aestheticization of the living environment since the 1980s. A postmodern and deconstructivist formal language has often found application in exhibition buildings. New buildings, extensions or conversions have also been made in and around Basel that have been designed by nationally and internationally successful architects ( Renzo Piano , Zaha Hadid , Frank O. Gehry , Steib + Steib , Herzog & de Meuron , Mario Botta ) and find recognition as avant-garde museum architecture. In some museums, on the other hand, the building fabric is old to very old, as they are former residential and commercial buildings or monasteries and churches that have been converted for exhibition purposes.
Schaulager (architects Herzog & de Meuron); Emmanuel Hoffmann Foundation
Museum Tinguely (architect Mario Botta); Jean Tinguely and contemporaries
Toy Worlds Museum Basel at Barfüsserplatz; Dolls, teddies, miniatures
Historical Museum Basel - Barfüsserkirche; Cultural history of the city of Basel and the Upper Rhine
The museums are a central aspect of Basel's tourist attraction and thus an important economic factor. Some of the Basel museums are public institutions, the majority of which, however, are under private law and mostly funded by foundations . In addition to the high density of museums in comparison with other cities and urban catchment areas of a similar size, these private collections have not least contributed to the high quality of the museum. Almost all of the private collections came into being after the Second World War. The public museums, on the other hand, mostly go back to the time before. The collections of the five state museums in the canton of Basel-Stadt even have a history of development lasting several centuries.
Development of museums
Museums in the city
Early collections
The creation of the first public collection is closely related to the University of Basel and to the early modern book, art and natural history cabinets, some of which were in Basel. In particular, the Amerbach book printer family collected a very large number of books, paintings, goldsmith's work, coins and natural objects during the 16th century. The Amerbach cabinet was about to be closed in 1661 following an offer to buy from Amsterdam, the then European center for trading in collection objects. Initiated by the mayor Johann Rudolf Wettstein , the city and university decided to jointly acquire the collection and keep it in Basel. Installed from 1671 in the Haus zur Mücke near Münsterplatz , the collection did not actually form a museum. The main purpose of the facility was that of a library for university operations, only a few rooms on the first floor were reserved for art and natural objects. Two librarians managed the whole collection.
After the second half of the 18th century, the number of books and objects grew rapidly in the wake of the educational efforts of the Enlightenment. Significant holdings of antiques, coins, fossils and natural objects came to the Mücke house through purchase, donation or bequests from private collectors. A particularly important entry point in 1823 was the Faesch Museum , a 17th century Basel collection. The first coherent ethnological collection came with the "Mexican Cabinet", which the businessman Lukas Vischer created during his Central American travels from 1828 to 1837. In 1821 natural produce was removed from the inventory in the Haus zur Mücke and its own natural history museum was founded in the Falkensteiner Hof, also on Münsterplatz, which also included the apparatus cabinets of the physical and chemical institute.
The city's actual art hoard was the Basel Town Hall , the rich decoration and maintenance of which had been a permanent municipal task since the early 16th century and provided orders for numerous artists. A “museum corner” must have existed in the city armory since the 16th century . Although here, as elsewhere, weapons that had become unfit for war were taken out of service for disposal, a significant number of them remained, which can only be explained by the fact that the armory keepers stored warehouses that had become useless from the Middle Ages or early modern times due to their memory value. First and foremost, the real and supposed trophies of the Burgundy loot from 1476, which Basel had received and which were still shown to onlookers centuries later, were memorable . In contrast, the safekeeping of the Basel cathedral treasure , which had lost all liturgical value with the Reformation, had no museum character; for the cult objects locked in the minster sacristy for three centuries remained unseen until 1833 and appeared solely as book values in the state budget.
First museum building
As late as 1767, the university professor Johann Jakob d'Annone had the pictures and other sights placed on the previously empty ground floor of the Haus zur Mücke in order to have more space for the books on the first floor and arranged for a more systematic arrangement; But a few decades later, the building and its infrastructure were no longer sufficient for the increased public traffic (from 1829 it was opened four days a week) and the modern knowledge culture established in the course of the Enlightenment . A complete inventory of the holdings was missing and was "up to now, in view of the inadequate space, where some pieces had been buried in dark corners under inch-thick dust for decades".
The shortage of space ended in 1849 when the collection moved to the multi-purpose building by Melchior Berri on Augustinergasse, simply known as the " Museum ", which had replaced the former Augustinian monastery there. It was financed with a one-time state contribution and donations from the citizens. The late Classicist monumental building with decorative painting and frescoes by Arnold Böcklin is a comparatively early bourgeois museum and the first large Basel museum. The reception of Karl Friedrich Schinkel and his Berlin building academy is clearly recognizable . Its space and usage program, however, combined university facilities with a library, natural history and art collections. This also corresponded to the institutional requirements of the university. Most of the subsidiary institutions, i.e. institutions that support teaching and research on the object, were also considered collections. These then included the apparatus of the chemical and physical institutions or the instruments of the anatomical institution.
Division of public collections into state museums
Parallel to the specialization of the educational and research disciplines, which happened since the beginning of the 19th century, institutional collections, which were separated according to scientific categories, developed from the diverse inventory of objects in Basel. They were a completely different type than the chambers of curiosities, for which, according to Basel Professor Wilhelm Wackernagel , "people had" completely carefree, with half pedantic, half childish zeal only for curiosities ". The natural history museum established in 1821 was the first step in the new direction. In 1836 the art collection became legally independent from the university library and was given its own state art commission to oversee it. 1856, the same year along the lines of came Germanic National Museum in Augustinergasse founded in Nuremberg held by the Museum "medieval collection" in adjoining rooms and annex buildings (Bishop, Niklaus chapel) of the Basel Cathedral , 1887, the casts of ancient sculptures came to the "Sculpture Hall» of the «Basler Kunstverein». In the meantime, the chemical and physical institutes had also moved to the new building for the natural sciences, known as the Bernoullianum , in 1874 , after which their holdings lost their collection character in favor of laboratory facilities. However, the canton found it difficult to continue building a museum in favor of its collections. The museum on Augustinergasse was a remarkable start, but for almost fifty years it remained the only one of its kind.
In 1892 the "antiquarian collection" (the ancient cabaret) excluding ethnological objects and the medieval collection in the cathedral with the historical weapons of the Basel armory were combined to form the Basel Historical Museum and from 1894 exhibited in the converted Barfüsserkirche . Today it houses the most comprehensive cultural and historical collection on the Upper Rhine and shows evidence of handicrafts (minster treasure and goldsmithing, glass painting) and everyday culture (furniture, tapestries, coin cabinet). The focus is on the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Baroque period. In 1896 the entire library was moved to the new university library . The “ethnographic collection”, renamed “Sammlung für Völkerkunde” since 1905, was able to move into new premises in 1917 with an extension to the museum on Augustinergasse and became the “Museum für Völkerkunde”. It houses around three hundred thousand objects as well as just as many historical photographs and is considered the largest ethnological museum in Switzerland and one of the largest in Europe. The collection includes objects from Europe, ancient Egypt, Africa, Asia (Tibet and Bali collections), ancient America and Oceania. In 1944, the federal authorities elevated its European collection parts to the “Swiss Museum of Folklore”. This separation has not existed since 1997. The non-European and European collections now form the Basel Museum of Cultures ; The name is intended to express that the focus of the museum has shifted from conveying “foreign cultures” to intercultural dialogue . The Natural History Museum Basel , which presents most areas of the natural sciences (anthropology, mineralogy, palaeontology; vertebrates, insects with the "Beetle Collection Frey" and other invertebrates), has kept both the location it was in in 1849 and its traditional name. It calls its collections with around eight million objects that are closely linked to scientific research "Archives of Life".
In 1849 the public art collection was set up on the upper floor of the museum on Augustinergasse, but due to its growth it had to suffer from ever greater space problems. In 1936, after around three decades of planning, the art collection moved to the Kunstmuseum Basel . In 1922 it had branches in the “Augustinerhof” on Augustinergasse (Kupferstichkabinett) and in the “Bachofenhaus” on Münsterplatz (Bachofen collection with other holdings), and since 1928 its main part has been temporarily housed in the Kunsthalle. The art gallery and the copper engraving cabinet of the art museum house the largest and most important public art collection in Switzerland. With a focus on painting and drawing by Upper Rhine artists from 1400 to 1600 (Holbein family, Witz, Cranach the Elder, Grünewald) and art from the 19th to 21st centuries (Böcklin, van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin; Cubism with Picasso and Braque; German Expressionism; American post-war art), it is also one of the most important museums of its kind internationally. Since the art collection was relocated, the museum on Augustinergasse has only been available to the Natural History Museum and the Ethnological Museum / Museum of Cultures. A fundamental expansion of the public museum collection took place in 1961 with the establishment of the Antikenmuseum Basel and the Ludwig Collection , in which the ancient holdings of the Historical Museum (cabaret) and the art museum (sculptures) were brought together with private donations, and from 1966 into one, from 1988 into two classical ones Villas by Melchior Berri opposite the art museum have been exhibited. The Antikenmuseum is the only museum in Switzerland dedicated exclusively to the art of the Mediterranean region (mainly Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek, Italian and Roman cultures, plus Levant and the Middle East) during antiquity from the 4th millennium BC. BC to the 7th century AD. The focus is on the collection of Greek vases and ancient sculptures as well as the ancient Egyptian section.
Dependances of the state museums
The increased space requirements of the collections in the museum on Augustinergasse led to the connection of an entire neighboring district, but the other museums also expanded. The historical museum in the Barfüsserkirche received the following: 1926–1934 the living museum in the Segerhof, the theme of which has been continued since 1951 by the Museum of Basler Wohnkultur in the " Haus zum Kirschgarten "; In 1943 the musical instrument collection, which has been the music museum in the former “Lohnhof” prison since 2000 and which conveys five centuries of European music history; 1981 the carriage and sleigh collection in Brüglingen . The casts stored in the Sculpture Hall in 1927 due to the lack of public interest at the time became part of the Antikenmuseum in 1961 and were given their own exhibition rooms in the Sculpture Hall Basel in 1963 . The merging of the entire architectural sculpture of the Parthenon is unique worldwide . The second building for the public art collection was the Museum of Contemporary Art in the St. Alban Valley in 1981 . As the first public exhibition building in Europe, it was dedicated exclusively to contemporary art production and practice from the 1960s onwards. In addition to classic media such as painting and sculpture, it also collects video art.
Repealed and Parastate Museums
The " Gewerbemuseum " founded in 1878 by the craftsmen's and trade association to present local craftsmanship and partially nationalized in 1914 in 1914 (from 1989 onwards, the "Museum of Design" due to its further developed thematic focus) and in 1939 in the old monastery building of the "Kleiner Klingental" as The “City and Minster Museum”, part of the state preservation of historical monuments, was closed in 1996 as part of austerity measures. In the case of the Gewerbemuseum, the holdings were split up, and the library and poster collection went to the School of Design. The city and minster museum, however, remained in its previous premises as the Kleines Klingental Museum, supported by a foundation . The Fondation Herzog presented from 2002 to 2011 in the characteristically industrial Dreispitzareal in a "Laboratory for Photography» the photo collection of Ruth and Peter Herzog (approximately 300,000 works with a focus on the industrial society of the 19th century). The photo collection was taken over in 2015 by the architects Herzog & de Meuron in the “Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron Cabinet” (minus 3,000 works that remain with the Herzog Foundation) and archived again in the Dreispitz area.
The Swiss Fire Brigade Museum , founded in 1957 as the "Basel Fire Brigade Museum", is domiciled in the premises of the cantonal professional fire brigade, but is not a state museum and is not run as a separate department in the cantonal administration. His collection, which also includes permanent loans from the Historisches Museum, includes documents dating back to the 13th century. The same applies to the Hörnli cemetery collection , which has been located on the grounds of the cantonal central cemetery since 1994, but is supported by the “Cemetery Collection Association at Hörnli”. Objects from the funeral world are presented : cinder urns, documents on the history of the cremation, hearses, coffins, cemetery regulations, grave crosses, wreaths of glass beads and mementos.
Other museums
The first museum not supported by the canton of Basel-Stadt was built in 1860 in a hall of the Basel Mission . It showed cult and cultural objects of the countries and peoples in which the Basel Mission was active, as well as a portrait gallery of missionaries. This exhibition was later sold in part to the canton and closed again. The concept of the multi-purpose building as with the museum on Augustinergasse was taken up by the Basler Kunstverein, which had the Kunsthalle am Steinenberg built in 1869–1872 , in which exhibition and administration rooms, a library and a sculptor's studio were set up; This was followed in 1885 as a side wing by the sculpture hall, which, as mentioned above, took over the casts of ancient statues from the museum on Augustinergasse in 1887–1927. The former “Künstlerhaus” now sees itself “as an interface between artists and art mediators and as a place that mediates between local and international developments”. The next museum that did not go back to a state initiative was the above-mentioned "Gewerbemuseum" (industrial museum) from 1878, which, however, already found a new sponsor eight years later in the canton. An institution of the University of Basel is the Anatomical Museum , which became independent as a "Pathological-Anatomical Collection" when it moved into its own building in 1880; The beginning of the collection activity goes back to Carl Gustav Jung in the 1820s, the oldest anatomical specimen in the world (made by Andreas Vesalius in Basel in 1543) and a skeleton prepared by Felix Platter in 1573 are of particular importance .
In 1924, the donation of a private collection to the University of Basel was followed by the Pharmazie-Historisches Museum (originally "Collection for historical pharmacy") with one of the world's largest collections on the history of pharmacy. It includes old medicines and former pharmacy items, laboratory utensils, ceramics, instruments, books, arts and crafts. In 1945 the "Swiss Gymnastics and Sports Museum" was created and renamed the Swiss Sports Museum in 1977 ; The sponsorship is the “Sports Museum Switzerland Foundation”. The focus is on ball and ball games, cycling, gymnastics and winter sports. From the 1954 exhibition “Our way to the sea” of the “ Schweizerische Reederei ” in Basel's Rhine port , the shipping museum, the Swiss transport hub, emerged. It is supported by an association. From 1954 to 1979 the Museum für Völkerkunde was affiliated with the “Swiss Paper History Collection”, which in 1980 moved into its own house in the Gallician mill in the former St. Alban industrial district as the Basler Papiermühle - Swiss Museum for Paper, Writing and Printing . This museum is supported by the “Basler Papiermühle Foundation”. The Jewish Museum of Switzerland , which shows the cultural history of the Jews in Switzerland and Basel as well as documents from the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, was founded in 1966 by the “Association for the Jewish Museum of Switzerland”.
Like the Kleines Klingental Museum, the Klingental exhibition space , which opened in 1974, is set up in the former Klingental monastery complex. It is intended to serve as a platform for dealing with the current work of the artists living in Basel and for promoting young talent. The institution is supported by the "Klingental Exhibition Space Association". The Cartoon Museum Basel , founded in 1979 and dedicated to the subjects of caricatures, cartoons, comics, parodies and pastiches, on the other hand, is based on the commitment of an individual, the collector and patron Dieter Burckhardt. The "Foundation for Caricatures & Cartoons Collection" is affiliated to the Christoph Merian Foundation as an independent foundation . The exhibition rooms have been located in a late Gothic old building since 1996, which was renovated by the two architects Herzog & de Meuron and supplemented by a new building. The Swiss Architecture Museum was founded in 1984 and has been located in the rooms of the art gallery that was completely renovated and converted by architects Miller & Maranta and Peter Märkli since 2004 ; In temporary exhibitions it deals with topics and questions of international architecture and urbanism . The architecture museum benefits from its location in Basel, where a noticeable concentration of internationally significant architectural offices has developed, among which Herzog & de Meuron in particular have contributed to the regional museum construction. Its sponsor is the «Architecture Museum Foundation».
The Museum Tinguely , which opened in 1996, shows the life and works of the artist Jean Tinguely in a permanent exhibition . Special exhibitions deal with the work of artistic companions and other positions of modernism. The museum designed by Mario Botta is financed exclusively by the Basel pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche . The Toy World Museum Basel , which opened in 1998 and belongs to Gigi Oeri and whose collection was built up by her, was founded on patronage . In addition to dolls, dollhouses and miniature shops from the 19th and 20th centuries, it shows the world's largest collection of teddy bears. The media art company [plug.in] , whose premises opened in 2000, is sponsored by the “Association for New Media” founded in 1999. He realizes exhibitions and does international networking for artists; Another task is to mediate between media art and the general public.
Urban Neighborhood Museums
Many of the small and medium-sized communities around Basel have local and local museums that are not shown below. Mention is made of the houses whose collection has a character that extends beyond the local area and which are generally freely accessible several days a week.
Natural, cultural and technical history collections
The oldest museum in the Basel region outside the city is the Museum of the Canton of Basel-Landschaft in Liestal , today Museum.BL . It was founded in 1837 as the “Naturaliencabinett”, and until the 1930s it was mainly natural history objects that were included in the collection. Since then the focus has shifted more to cultural history . The museum uses the diversity of the collection for a wide-ranging engagement with the environment, history and the present. The three-country museum in Lörrach goes back to the "Lörracher Altertumsverein" founded in 1882, which bequeathed its collection to the city of Lörrach in 1927. It started operations in 1932 as a "local history museum" and today, with its three-country exhibition, it presents past and present, the division and similarities of the border region around the Basel tri- border region of Germany, France and Switzerland.
The Roman Museum Augst , opened in 1957 , is an open-air museum on the site of the former Roman city of Augusta Raurica , which has been explored since the Renaissance, and shows numerous excavation finds, including the largest silver treasure of late antiquity . The neighboring reconstructed "Roman House" is a gift from the Basel patron René Clavel , but the museum and the entire archaeological park are an office of the canton of Basel-Landschaft. In the Brüglinger level which is Mühlenmuseum the Christoph Merian Foundation . The watermill of the former "Hofgut Brüglingen", which was converted into a museum in 1966 , houses an exhibition on the history of the mill and milling from the Bronze Age to the 20th century. The mill is functional, so that the work processes from the water-driven mill wheel to the rotating millstone are shown.
In the Riehen toy museum, village and vineyard museum , opened in 1972, one of the most important collections of European toys is presented alongside objects relating to the history of the village and vineyards . Some of the toys come from private collections and some are on loan from the Museum of Cultures. The museum is an office of the Riehen municipal administration. The Museum for Music Automatons in Seewen , which is located on the outermost edge of the Basel Museum area, houses one of the world's largest and most famous collections of Swiss music boxes, record boxes, clocks and jewelry with musical mechanisms and other mechanical music automatons . It was created in 1979 as a private museum for the collector Heinrich Weiss and in 1990 it was donated to the Swiss Confederation. The collection has been presented in a new building since 2000. In 1997 the electricity museum of the energy supplier Elektra Birseck was opened in Münchenstein . The topic is the history of the development of electricity production and use. The collection includes rare historical equipment and is complemented by a laboratory in which visitors can experiment with electricity.
Focus on art collection
From the end of the 1980s onwards, museums in the Basel region intensified, focusing on contemporary art and design. The Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein is a design museum with a focus on furniture and interior design. The museum has the chair and furniture collection of Rolf Fehlbaum, the owner of the furniture manufacturer Vitra , as its starting point, but it is an independent institution. The Vitra building complex contributes significantly to the accumulation of avant-garde museum architecture in the Basel region. In addition to the Frank O. Gehry Museum, which opened in 1989, there are buildings by Zaha Hadid , Nicholas Grimshaw , Tadao Andō and Álvaro Siza Vieira . The Fondation Beyeler Foundation has owned the art collection of Hildy and Ernst Beyeler since 1982 , which the couple gathered over a period of around 50 years. The sculptures of classical modernism have been exhibited in Riehen since 1997 in a museum building designed by Renzo Piano . Works by Degas, Monet, Cézanne, van Gogh, Picasso, Rothko, Warhol, Lichtenstein and Bacon, among others, are shown. The trees in the park of the highly regarded building were covered in 1998 by Christo and Jeanne-Claude .
With the Kunsthaus Baselland in Muttenz , the "Kunstverein Baselland" received its own exhibition building in 1997. The Kunsthaus is dedicated to contemporary art and shows current projects by regional and international artists in changing exhibitions. The Kunst Raum Riehen , opened in 1998, is also a public institution and is thematically comparable. It serves the community of Riehen and its art commission for the exhibition of regional contemporary art. The Sculpture at Schoenthal Foundation, founded in 2001 in the former Schönthal Abbey , presents around twenty works by international and Swiss artists in a permanently accessible sculpture park under the motto "Art and Nature in Dialog" . In the Romanesque church interior, which has been converted into a gallery, temporary exhibitions by contemporary artists take place. 2003 was Schaulager the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation in Münchenstein opened. Its centerpiece is the foundation's avant-garde art collection, it is a mixture between a public museum, an art warehouse and an art research institute. The polygonal building is a design by the architects Herzog & de Meuron . The Espace d'Art Contemporain Fernet Branca in Saint-Louis , the Alsatian neighboring town of Basel, is located in the distillery of the spirits manufacturer Fernet-Branca, which was closed in 2000 . Since 2004 the museum has presented contemporary art themes and artists in changing exhibitions. The museum is run by the Association pour le Musée d'Art Contemporain Fernet Branca.
Museum funding and museum policy
Primacy of the library
It is not uncommon for museums to come from court collections - at least in terms of their basic stock. In contrast, Basel has cultivated the culture of remembrance since the end of the 19th century , with the purchase of the Amerbach Cabinet in 1661, the oldest existing museum collection in a bourgeois community. The purchase of a collection from the 16th century corresponded to the interest in historical and documentary art that was widespread at the time. However, the purchase was essentially caused by the intention to upgrade that of the university with the collection of books in the Amerbach Cabinet; the Gesellschaftshaus zur Mücke, in which the collection managed by the university was housed, was called the "library" because of its main purpose. The task of the municipal art store was not transferred from the town hall to the Mücke house until the second half of the 18th century. In 1770 Holbein's Passion Altar, which had been one of the main attractions for visitors since the Reformation, was moved over, in 1771 several paintings from the council and in 1786 Holbein's organ from the cathedral. Legally, however, despite this weighting of the object collections, everything remained the same for a long time. The natural history holdings and the art collection were no longer part of the library until 1821 and 1836, respectively.
Bourgeois museum culture was still at the beginning of its development at the end of the 18th century, as the very tight opening times of the Haus zur Mücke (on Thursday afternoons from two to four o'clock, otherwise on request) made clear. Regular gallery visits by citizens and foreigners have only been recorded since then. Collection activities during the three decades before and after 1800 were most likely to be seen in science objects, where some acquisitions and donations took place. The numerous first-class art objects that were imported from revolutionary France in the 1790s, however, did not find a broad group of buyers in Basel and were mostly resold.
Nationalization and popular education
For the republican and monarchical civil states of the 19th century, collections in the form of public museums became symbols of their self-determination. The mass deportation of works of art to Paris during the Napoleonic wars had created an awareness of the extent to which art creates identity. The "Musée français" in the Louvre and the "Musée des monuments français", which was closed in 1816 in a former Augustinian convent, were exemplary . The maintenance of programmatic museum collections and the construction of museum buildings became one of the most representative national tasks.
In Basel, however, it was first the increasing lack of space in the Haus zur Mücke that led to thoughts about a new building. The discussion about the right place for the public collection gained a political dimension after the canton was divided into an urban and a rural part. The University Act of 1818 had made the corporate - autonomous university a cantonal educational institution and the university property indirectly made state property. As part of the university property, two thirds of the collection belonged to the rural canton and had to be bought by the city canton. The consternation in the city about it led to the law on the administration and use of the university property of 1836, which linked this indissolubly and for educational purposes to the location of the city of Basel. This provision is still in force today.
One consequence of the events was the establishment of the "Voluntary Academic Society" in 1835, which began to support the collections financially or through its own purchases and donations as part of its promotion of the university. However, the strongest impetus for building a museum came from the natural sciences around physics and chemistry professor Peter Merian , who had probably given the Natural History Museum - as the only state collection - its own annual budget. The establishment of the Natural History Museum in Falkensteinerhof as a combination of academic teaching facility, library and laboratories also served as a basic model for the museum building. The fact that in the end an actual university building was dispensed with in favor of a primary museum building was due to the difficult situation that the university had in large circles of the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie. There the university was seen as a backward-looking institution. The museum, on the other hand, was thought to be an engine of practical popular education and was willing to support its construction with private contributions as part of the then rampant renewal process of the city.
At the instigation of Christian Friedrich Schönbein , the “Voluntary Museum Association” came into effect in 1850, a follow-up institution to the association founded in 1841 to build the museum. Formed on the model of the Royal Institution in London, it was intended to "stimulate the sense of science and art". The association, which was open to all residents of Basel, sponsored the collections with financial means and wanted to arouse interest in the museum through public lectures to which women were also allowed. However, it was unable to maintain the vigor of the initial phase and, despite the rapid population growth in Basel, lost members in the second half of the century. The museum did not take advantage of the popular education it offered and hoped for, as its founders and supporters had hoped. The ideal socialization of the museum developed only gradually, and the museum retained old organizational forms for a long time. The art collection did not receive a conservator with an academic degree until 1887. In addition, in the revised University Act of 1866, the state still did not provide for regular donations for the antiquarian, medieval and art collections. He left these to their income from admission fees and the support of associations and private individuals, most importantly the “Birrmann Foundation” and the “Emilie Linder Foundation” in favor of the art collection. Only thanks to this was an active collection policy that went beyond preserving inherited cultural assets.
Civil culture of remembrance and modernity
The museum officials assigned the collections a federal task from the start, because they wanted to use them to exert a "beneficial and beneficial influence on the entire fatherland". The “secret National Gallery” grew mainly through purchases of Swiss works of art. When the establishment of a federal national museum was being negotiated from 1883, the canton of Basel-Stadt consistently advocated becoming its location and offered its cultural-historical collections as the core holdings, which were systematically expanded in response to the Basel application. The Swiss National Museum came to Zurich, but the project of a - no longer Swiss, but Basler - history museum in a historical building, the high Gothic former Barfüsserkirche, was realized. The establishment of the Historisches Museum "was a self-confident show of Basel artistry and skill, a mixture of educational corridor and booth filade". The nationalization of the Gewerbemuseum a few years earlier as a venue for contemporary achievements should also be seen under the aspect of civic pride and a newly invented guild spirit, in which the bourgeoisie understood their values and performance as the foundation of state and society.
Knowledge of the international status of the collections was widespread, but it was not until the end of the 19th century that broader social classes became aware of them. The historicist culture of remembrance , which developed its meaning and effect at that time, was particularly linked to the medieval collection and the many late medieval Renaissance works of the Upper Rhine in the art museum. Since then, Basel has also maintained the claim to own the oldest permanent art collection in an urban community with the acquisition of the Amerbach cabinet. As Basel in 1892 (500 years of acquisition of Kleinbasel by Grossbasel) and 1901 (400 years of Basel's membership of the Swiss Confederation) with two large public celebrations, the bourgeois-minded part of the population (and thus the mainstream of the museums) with long-lasting historical-patriotic, for their Some of the gestures that create identity were used, the images of the past available in museums were used.
At the latest after the break in the epoch of the First World War and in view of the social and cultural developments, the claim to validity of the bourgeoisie and its institutionalized self-representation became an issue for the Basel museums. The disputes about the relationship between museums and modernism took place particularly in the field of fine arts. The construction of a separate museum for the Basel art collection sparked a "monumentality debate " in the late 1920s, in which the representatives of the purpose-oriented New Building rejected the timeless palace form that was ultimately chosen as a demonstration of the power of a conservative and "mentally exhausted" understanding of culture. In contrast to the architectural gesture and anti-modernist zeitgeist of the 1930s, decidedly modern works were purchased from the 1920s until the outbreak of World War II. In 1934 a painting by Vincent van Gogh and an ensemble of 134 drawings by Paul Cézanne entered the public art collection for the first time. The Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation , founded in 1933, supported the art museum and moved into the house with its contemporary works in 1940. The breakthrough for the change in the overall profile came with the special loan from the Basel city parliament in 1939 for the purchase of German museum goods, suggested by museum director Georg Schmidt , which the National Socialists had defamed as " degenerate art ".
The establishment of classical modernism in the art museum continued with the continuous acquisition of American post-war art in particular. The heavily controversial and unsuccessful referendum against the purchase of two Picasso paintings in 1967 is of outstanding importance for the label "Museum City" that Basel claims and is a key moment in the already mentioned Basel culture of remembrance for the interlinking of society and museum.
Democratization, popularization
Despite the plebiscitary confirmation of the traditional museum business, it had been in a permanent crisis since the late 1960s. This crisis, which was not only evident in Basel, arose from the far-reaching, socio-political reassessment of the cultural. The purchases of the State Art Credit and the Christmas exhibition in 1967 in the Kunsthalle Basel prompted violent protests by the association of rejected artists, known as the “Farnsburger Group”. Finally, the canton parliament also dealt with the problems mentioned. The events led to the question of whether Basel - now understood negatively - was “only a museum city”, and to a broad-based debate about the promotion of young artists and the functioning of museums. The founding of the Klingental exhibition space a few years later is directly related to the deficits discussed at the time.
The democratization that began in the 1960s meant turning away from the elitist in favor of the egalitarian and reducing fears of the threshold. The short-lived Progressive Museum (1968–1974), which focused on the constructivist work of the 1960s in the context of the Nouvelles Tendances , aimed to “create a modern collection that should be accessible to the public from the start” and wanted everyone to be “secularized” Solemnity »avoid. The expansion of mediation and education, also an order that goes back to this time, could only be done with more resources. However, since the mid-1970s, an increasingly tense and permanently difficult financial situation in the public sector became noticeable. A museology degree at the University of Basel could only be offered from 1992–1994 due to lack of funds. In the mid-1990s, a government decision cut the budget of the state museums by ten percent, and two museums, the Museum of Design and the City and Minster Museum, had to close in 1996 as a result. The fierce debate that followed and the pressure of a popular initiative in favor of the Basel city museums led to the Basel City Museum Act in 1999, which put the holdings of the remaining five state museums (Museum of Antiquities, History Museum, Art Museum, Museum of Cultures, Museum of Natural History) in the hands of Parliament . As a central part of the cultural expenditure, the museums are also part of the discussion, which has been intensifying for a number of years between the two Basel cantons, about the compensation for the city center service within the framework of a financial equalization scheme .
The museums have been popularized and aestheticized at the same time since the 1980s. Since the 1980s there has been a wave of new museum buildings, the avant-garde architecture of which has gained international fame. The exhibition concept of the Musée Sentimental , which focuses on the prosaic, everyday world of experience and led to an exhibition of the same name in the Museum of Design in 1989, contributed a lot to the popularization . The annual Basel Museum Night has around one hundred thousand admissions, the museums have between 1.2 and 1.7 million visitors per year. The population ascribes a “major role for the educational offer in leisure time” to museums. Museums operate in an environment that is more and more exposed to the conditions of the leisure and free market and are understood as a location and economic factor. The Tutankhamun special exhibition at the Museum of Antiquities, which attracted 600,000 visitors, brought the Basel hotel industry an increase in overnight stays of around 6% in 2004. Under unfavorable conditions, the Basel museums generate added value of at least 41 million francs a year (up to just under 55 million francs including the Museum am Burghof and the Vitra Design Museum). In contrast to the state, the use of private funds in the museum sector has increased significantly. Funds from patrons or sponsors are playing an increasingly important role in the financing of exhibitions, parts of collections or entire museums and are accordingly sought after. This competitive situation is also reflected in the great institutional autonomy of the Basel-Stadt museums, which are the only state-owned companies that are allowed to operate according to the method of New Public Management , which is influenced by the private sector .
literature
- Othmar Birkner, Hanspeter Rebsamen: INSA - inventory of modern Swiss architecture 1850–1920. Separately printed Basel . Bern 1986.
- Peter Blome: Basel museums - a definition of the position. The Basel museums and their audience. In: Basler Stadtbuch 1994. pp. 106-109.
- Edgar Bonjour : The University of Basel from its beginnings to the present. 1460-1960. Helbing & Lichtenhahn, Basel 1960.
- Albert Bruckner (Red.): Basel. Urban and countryside. A current cross-section. Benno Schwabe & Co Verlag, Basel 1937, pp. 155–197.
- Historisches Museum Basel (Ed.): Historisches Museum Basel. Guide to the collections. Basel 1994, ISBN 1-85894-004-4 .
- Dorothea Huber: Architecture Guide Basel. The building history of the city and its surroundings. Architekturmuseum Basel, Basel 1993, ISBN 3-905065-22-3 .
- Georg Kreis : Degenerate Art for Basel. The challenge of 1939. Wiese Verlag, Basel 1990, ISBN 3-909158-31-5 .
- Georg Kreis, Beat von Wartburg (Ed.): Basel. History of an Urban Society. Christoph Merian Verlag, Basel 2000, ISBN 3-85616-127-9 .
- Fritz K. Mathys: Basel's treasuries. On the creation and development of our museums. In: Basler Stadtbuch 1979 , pp. 151-164.
- Nikolaus Meier: Identity and Difference. For the 150th anniversary of the opening of the museum on Augustinergasse in Basel. Reprint from Volume 100 of the Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde .
- Annemarie Monteil: Basel museums. Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel 1977, ISBN 3-7643-0945-8 .
- Anne Nagel, Martin Möhle, Brigitte Meles: The art monuments of the canton of Basel-Stadt. Volume VII The old town of Grossbasel I - secular buildings . Bern 2006.
- Public art collection Basel: Festschrift for the opening of the art museum. Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel 1936.
- R. Schneider-Sliwa, C. Erismann, C. Klöpper: Visits to museums - stimulus for the economy in Basel. (= Basel urban and regional research. Volume 28). Basel 2005.
- Daniela Settelen-Trees: Basel Historical Museum in the Barfüsserkirche 1894–1994. Basel 1994, ISBN 3-9520458-2-9 .
- Raphael Suter: The closure of two museums is meeting with resistance. In: Basler Stadtbuch 1995, pp. 158–161.
- René Teuteberg : Basel history. Christoph Merian Verlag, Basel 1986, ISBN 3-85616-034-5 .
- Burkard von Roda: Basel museums - a location definition. What makes Basel rich. In: Basler Stadtbuch 1994. pp. 112–115.
- Rainer Wirtz: Basel museums - a definition of the position. The new museums - between competition and compensation. In: Basler Stadtbuch 1994. pp. 100-105.
Individual evidence
- ↑ In particular the large cantonal museums in Basel-Stadt: "The museums have the task of collecting, preserving, documenting, researching and conveying cultural values." Museums Act of June 16, 1999, Section 3.
- ↑ Compare the representation of the different area definitions on the website of the Eurodistrict Basel ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Map with the distribution area of the Upper Rhine Museum Pass
- ↑ «So far, the term 'Museum City Basel' has primarily been associated with the valuable collections and numerous special exhibitions of state and private museums that are unparalleled here." (Raphael Suter: “Is Switzerland's first museology degree already finished?” In: Basler Jahrbuch 1994. p. 109.) “Cities with a comparable number of inhabitants usually have at most one art gallery, and this is of regional importance. As a location for art museums, Basel is unique considering its size. " ( Maria Becker: The small town of large art ships. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. June 2, 2008. )
- ^ Festschrift for the inauguration of the museum in Basel on November 26, 1849 . Basel 1849, p. 3.
- ^ Wilhelm Wackernagel: About the medieval collection in Basel. Basel 1857, p. 3.
- ↑ The Voluntary Museum Association ended its support of the Bernoullianum in the 1870s, in contrast to the university library, which still receives donations.
- ↑ History of the Museum für Gestaltung The museum was first run on a private basis in Weil am Rhein and then in Basel as an exhibition company. Die Schule für Gestaltung ( Memento of the original from March 1, 2009 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. continues to organize exhibitions using the poster collection.
- ↑ Compare the corresponding entries on the website of the canton of Basel-Landschaft: Museums in the municipalities
- ^ Website of the Sculpture at Schoenthal Foundation
- ↑ History of the museum (French) ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ There are older, but no longer existing, municipal collections. For example, the Zurich burger library with an attached coin cabinet and art collection was founded in 1629; however, it was also dissolved in 1780.
- ↑ The university property is "an indivisible property of the canton of Basel-Stadt that is indissolubly linked to the location of the city of Basel and that must never be alienated from the provisions of the foundations and the purpose of the higher education institutions." Law on University Property of June 16, 1999, § 2.
- ↑ Nikolaus Meier: Identity and Difference. For the 150th anniversary of the opening of the museum on Augustinergasse in Basel. Reprint from Volume 100 of the Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde. P. 165.
- ↑ Nikolaus Meier: Identity and Difference. For the 150th anniversary of the opening of the museum on Augustinergasse in Basel. Reprint from Volume 100 of the Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde. P. 179.
- ^ Dorothea Huber: Architecture Guide Basel. The building history of the city and its surroundings. Architekturmuseum Basel, Basel 1993, p. 193.
- ^ Dorothea Huber: Architecture Guide Basel. The building history of the city and its surroundings. Architekturmuseum Basel, Basel 1993, pp. 301–302.
- ↑ None of the 21 purchased objects came from private ownership and later had to be restituted. Georg Kreis: Switzerland and the trade in looted art in connection with the Second World War , 1997 ( Memento of the original from October 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ The naming of the square was a result of the gift of four pictures by Picasso after the positive referendum on the public purchase of two of his pictures.
- ↑ 1967 - An exhibition on the Farnsburgergruppe Basel in the Klingental exhibition space ( Memento of the original from November 18, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ History of the Progressive Museum
- ↑ The Basel-Stadt museums make up around a third of Basel-Stadt's annual cultural budget of around one hundred million francs. Compare Baselstädtisches Kulturbudget 2007. ( Memento of the original dated July 6, 2011 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.
- ↑ Visitor numbers to museums in the canton of Basel-Stadt. ( MS Excel ; 78 kB)
- ^ Government Council of the Canton of Basel-Stadt: Political Plan 2008–2011. P. 9.
- ^ Study by the Human Geography Institute at the University of Basel
Web links
- museen basel Website on the museums in and around Basel
- Museums in the municipalities Website on the local and local museums in the canton of Basel-Landschaft