The Basel museums encompass a series of museums in the city of Basel, Switzerland, and the neighboring region. They represent a broad spectrum of collections with a marked concentration in the fine arts and house numerous holdings of international significance. With at least three dozen institutions, not including the local history collections in the surrounding communities, the region offers an extraordinarily high density of museums compared to other metropolitan areas of similar size. They draw some one and a half million visitors annually.
Constituting an essential and defining component of Basel culture and cultural policy, the museums are the result of closely interwoven private and public collecting activities and promotion of arts and culture going back to the 16th century. The public museums of the canton of Basel-City arose from the 1661 purchase of the private Amerbach Cabinet by the city and the University of Basel and thus represent the oldest civic museum collection in continuous existence. Since the 1980s, a number of collections have been made public in new purpose-built structures that have achieved renown as acclaimed examples of avant-garde museum architecture.
Museum landscape The main focus of collecting among Basel museums is the fine arts – painting, drawing and sculpture. More than a dozen museums cover a spectrum that extends from antiquity up to the present and includes historic and established works of art as well as pioneering creations. In particular, the latter category has been made increasingly accessible to the public over the past two decades in a series of newly opened museums. There are collections with more of a local and regional character, yet a number of area museums, especially the larger institutions, are noted for their international orientation and reach. In addition, Basel benefits from a long tradition of collecting that, in contrast to many other museums in Central Europe, was not disrupted by the wars of the 20th century, as well as from the city's well-established connections to the market of art dealers and art collectors – such as through Art Basel.
Numerous museums address various themes of cultural history and ethnology while other institutions feature technical and scientific collections. The museums continue to be oriented to the scholarly tasks of collecting, conserving and exhibiting as well as research and educationEspecially in the case of the major cantonal museums in Basel-City: "The museums have the task of collecting, preserving, documenting, researching and communicating cultural assets." Museums Act (Museumsgesetz) from 16 June 1999, § 3. or at least view these as part of their activities. Consistent with museological trends seen elsewhere, however, the traditional self-image has evolved since the 1960s. Alongside the new forms of public outreach (museum education and didactics), institutional hybrid forms have arisen that actively embrace a sociopolitically relevant role and in which museum operations constitute just one facet, albeit a highly important one, of a more comprehensive cultural institution.
With the city's position at the junction of the "Dreiländereck" (Three-Countries Corner) and the compact municipal boundaries within the Basel region, most of Basel's museums are located in the city of Basel and thus in the canton of Basel-City but quite a few of museums lie in the canton of Basel-Country. The Basel museum landscape can also be said to extend to the museums of the greater metropolitan area, such as those in the neighboring towns of Lörrach, Saint-Louis and Weil am Rhein, with the latter included in the annual Basel Museum Night through the participation of Vitra Design Museum in Weil. In view of the numerous municipal, regional and national administrative units that come together here as well as the broader agglomeration,See the overview of different territorial definitions and perimeters on the website of Eurodistrict Basel . it is difficult to produce a conclusive figure for the number of Basel museums. Yet even when taking a narrowly drawn perimeter, the total comes to at least three dozen institutions that house collections and make them accessible to the public. The Basel museums are also part of the German-French-Swiss "Upper Rhine Museum Pass" that was introduced in 1999. This covers a much wider area than the Basel region, however, extending via Strasbourg up to Mannheim.Map showing the area covered by the Upper Rhine Museum Pass.
With the increasing aestheticization of everyday life, the architecture of museums has taken on special significance since the 1980s. A striking number of exhibition structures have incorporated a vocabulary of postmodern and deconstructivist forms. In and around Basel, new buildings, additions or renovations have been constructed from designs by nationally and internationally renowned architects (Renzo Piano, Zaha Hadid, Frank O. Gehry, Wilfried and Katharina Steib, Herzog & de Meuron, Mario Botta) and celebrated as examples of avant-garde museum architecture. In other area museums, by contrast, the building fabric is old to very old, consisting of former residential and commercial buildings or monasteries and churches that have been converted for exhibition purposes.
The museums are a central aspect of Basel's touristic appeal and hence an important economic factor. A number of Basel's museums are public institutions but the majority are privately sponsored, backed in most cases by foundations. Helping to generate the high density of museums compared to other cities and metropolitan areas of similar size,"Up until now, the label 'Museum City of Basel' was primarily associated with the valuable collections and numerous special exhibitions of the public and private museums that are present here in a unique density." (Suter, Raphael (1995): "Ist das erste Museologie-Studium der Schweiz bereits am Ende?" Basler Jahrbuch 1994, p. 109.) "Cities with a comparable number of inhabitants typically possess an art gallery of regional significance at best. As a location for art museums, measured in terms of its size, Basel is unmatched." (Becker, Maria (2 June 2008): "Die kleine Stadt der grossen Kunstschiffe". Neue Zürcher Zeitung.) these private collections have also made a substantial contribution to the high level of museum quality. The private collections nearly all came into being after the Second World War. Most of the public museums, by contrast, date from before the war. In fact, the collections of the five publicly run museums of the canton of Basel-City have histories that go back several centuries.
Development of the museums
Museums in the city
Early collections
The origins of the first public collection are closely linked to the University of Basel and the early modern era collections of books, art and natural curiosities, of which there were quite a few in Basel. Prominent among them, the Amerbach printer family (founded by Johann Amerbach) had collected a substantial number of books, paintings, goldsmith works, coins and natural objects during the 16th century. In 1661, the Amerbach Cabinet was on the verge of being disbanded following a purchase offer from Amsterdam, then the European center for the trade in collector's items. At the urging of the mayor Johann Rudolf Wettstein, the city and university decided to jointly purchase the collection in order to keep it in Basel. Installed in the Haus zur Mücke just off Cathedral Square in 1671, the collection did not operate like a museum. It principally served as a library for university scholars, with only a few parlors on the first floor reserved for works of art and natural objects. Two librarians were in charge of administering the overall collection.Bonjour, Edgar (1960). Die Universität Basel 1460–1960. Helbing & Lichtenhahn, Basel, pp. 320–322.
Beginning in the late 18th century, Basel saw an acceleration in the growth of collections of books and objects inspired by Enlightenment-era ideals of education and refinement. Significant holdings of antiquities, coins, fossils and natural curiosities made their way into the Haus zur Mücke through purchases, gifts or bequests by private collectors. An especially important addition came in 1823 with the contents of the Museum Faesch, a Basel collection from the 17th century. The first coherent ethnological collection was formed from the "Mexican cabinet" that had been assembled by the merchant Lukas Vischer from 1828 to 1837 during his travels in Central America. In 1821, the natural objects and artifacts were separated out from the collections in the Haus zur Mücke and an independent museum of natural history was established at the Falkensteiner Hof, likewise located right off Cathedral Square, which also included the instrument cabinets of the physics and chemistry institutes.Mathys, F. K. (1980). "Basels Schatzkammern. Zur Entstehung und Entwicklung unserer Museen." Basler Stadtbuch 1979, pp. 151–164.
The city's official repository for art was the Basel Town Hall (Rathaus) whose rich ornamentation and upkeep represented a constant undertaking for the city and a source of commissions for numerous artists from the early 16th century onward.Kreis, Georg; von Wartburg, Beat (2000). Basel. Geschichte einer städtischen Gesellschaft. Christoph Merian Publishing, Basel, pp. 395–396. The city armory likely had a "museum corner" starting in the 16th century. Following common practice, weapons that had become unfit for war were decommissioned for disposal. In Basel, however, a substantial number of them were preserved, which means that the armory caretakers wished to store the obsolete medieval or early modern militaria for the sake of memory value. The most prominent examples were the real and supposed trophies of the Burgundian booty from 1476, which had fallen to Basel and remained on display to curious onlookers centuries later.Historisches Museum Basel (1994): Historisches Museum Basel. Führer durch die Sammlungen. Merrell Holberton, London, p. 87. In contrast, the care and storage of the Basel Cathedral Treasury that had lost its liturgical value in the Reformation did not bear the character of a museum. Locked away in the cathedral sacristy for three centuries, the reliquaries and other religious objects remained inaccessible and out of view until 1833 and were merely listed as book value in the state budgets.
First museum building
In 1767, the university professor Johann Jakob d’Annone had the paintings and other objects moved to the previously empty ground floor of the Haus zur Mücke to create more space for the books on the first floor, and also provided for a more systematic organization. A few decades later, however, the building and its infrastructure no longer accommodated the increased volume of visitors (with the facility open four days of the week starting in 1829) and the modern culture of knowledge established through the Enlightenment. Moreover, a comprehensive index of the holdings was lacking, having been "altogether impossible heretofore in the inadequate premises where some pieces lay buried in darkened recesses for decades beneath an inch-thick layer of dust."Publication commemorating the dedication of the museum in Basel on 26 November 1849. Basel 1849, p. 3.