Online reports – Culture – The expanded Basel Art Museum opens to the public

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“Shaken Space”: Underground Foyer, Monumental Work*

The main building has been renovated, the new building is ready for occupancy – on Sunday and Monday there is an opportunity to take a look

From Aurel Schmidt

You can wander, stride, walk through the old and new rooms of the Basel Art Museum – there is always something to see. The quality of the collection is something that no one can ignore. The tour is impressive. With the upcoming opening of the extension, a new dimension has been reached.

Eight years have passed since the public first learned that the art patron Maja Oeri had provided the city of Basel with the funds to purchase the “Burghof”. This was linked to the donor’s idea or motivation to build an extension to the art museum opposite on the property. The donor and the state are sharing the 100 million Swiss francs construction costs equally.

The eight years are over, the building is finished. It will be opened to the public from Friday to Monday. The opening ceremony will begin on Friday evening in a closed circle. Everyone is happy, everyone is proud. It is a rough day for Basel. Guy Morin, the government president, Hans-Peter Wessels, Basel's building director, Bernhard Mendes Bürgi, the director of the art museum – they all give the impression of great satisfaction. Basel is celebrated as a cultural city, a dynamic city with a spirit of optimism – to come out of hiding so unprotected will mean something.

In fact, something remarkable has happened, of which the extension is just a sign. Basel really has every reason to be happy these days. It's done! And the usual happiness is, for once, tolerable today.

“Designed for a hundred years”

As is well known, it is not easy to lure media professionals out of their professional and personal reserves, but perhaps the moment will come when there is an opportunity to do so and when one can acknowledge that something really special has happened that rightly transcends the moment.

When the extension was presented to the international media today, architect Emanuel Christ said that the building was designed to last at least for the next hundred years. Perhaps he wanted to say that a new era in Basel's history had begun on this day. Yes, the extension is impressive. Please excuse, dear readers, this exaggeration of the author, but he did not want to leave it unsaid.

It will take some time to get used to the building, which quickly becomes forbidding and archaic in appearance. It stands there like a castle. The few windows and the skylight on the second floor mean that each room quickly gets its own lighting and the presentation of the works means that each one creates its own impression. This also seems to have been the architect's intention, to use the structural means to create a “content concentration”, as he puts it, which is further emphasized by the works on display.

A new sensation with every step

The collection of works by American artists on the first floor of the extension building probably makes the biggest impression. Some rooms are hung closely together, others are sparse and loose. As you walk through the rooms, new constellations and new views constantly emerge. Sometimes you have to move from work to work, other times you are surrounded by art and become the focal point yourself. Sometimes you think of a warehouse or a sample collection, other times of a sacred building. So you are confronted with a new, surprising sensation at every step.

The Americans were previously housed in the garden hall of the main building. The move to the extension building, with its new selection and arrangement, has brought to mind the extent and importance of the American works brought together in Basel. Swiss and Basel art (Lenz Klotz, Werner von Mutzenbecher, Marcel Schaffner and others) can now be viewed in the old location in the main building.

Lots of room for Böcklin and Hodler

In the main building, the presentation of the museum's own collection has undergone only a few changes. The Im Obersteg collection is housed on the mezzanine floor. On the first floor, there is ample space for Böcklin and Hodler, while the Impressionists, Cézanne and the 19th century seem somewhat claustrophobic in the cabinet-like rooms along Dufourstrasse. New to the exhibition and to the collection for the first time is the work “L'Etang Montfoucault, effet d'hiver” (1874) by Camille Pissarro. It was a gift to the museum in 2013 and is an enrichment. The old masters, a highlight of the museum, are also housed on the first floor in the old location.

Classical modernism has found its place on the second floor: Picasso, Braque, Léger, Chagall, Soutine, Munch, Corinth, Beckmann, Dix, as well as Giacometti and the five-part work “Annunciation after Titian” by Gerhard Richter, finally bid farewell.

Two exhibitions: Sculpture and Barnett Newman

Two new temporary exhibitions are scheduled to mark the opening of the partially renovated main building and the extension. The outgoing art museum director Bernhard Mendes Bürgi has curated the exhibition “Sculpture on the Move”. It provides an overview of sculpture from 1946 to 2016.

“On the Move” means that in a relatively short period of time, sculpture has undergone a profound transformation from simple, often symbolic and formally perfect works to new forms and different, even unusual materials (the “Brillo” boxes of Andy Warhol, the scrapped car body parts of Chamberlain, the slices of sausage by Dieter Roth).

The exhibition thrives on surprising juxtapositions. When you suddenly find yourself standing in front of Carl André's “10×10 Altstadt Square” (1967) and Ellsorth Kelly's “Blue Red Rocker” (1963), an encounter takes place that really shakes up the room. And the people in it too. Duane Hanson's “Man with Hand Cart” (1975) then stands next to it as questioningly as the visitor who first has to free himself from the electricity in the room. A catalogue has been published for the exhibition, which shows the works on display and provides pointed commentary.

Two days free entry

A second exhibition, which was curated by Anita Haldemann, presents drawings and prints by the American representative of Abstract Expressionism Barnett Newman (1905 to 1970). A catalogue has also been published for this exhibition.

A third publication presents the extension building or “new building”, as it will be called from now on. Stefano Graziani photographed it, Bernhard Mendes Bürgi, Manuel Christ and his partner Christph Gantenbein, and Mechtild Widrich described it.

On Sunday and Monday, the Basel public can visit the main building, the new building and the present, the new name for the former Museum of Contemporary Art, and discover or rediscover the three buildings of the art museum. Admission is free.

* Frank Stella: “Damascus Gate. Variation I”

14 April 2016

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