Kunstmuseum Basel

The Kunstmuseum Basel houses the oldest public art collection in the world and is generally considered to be the most important museum of art in Switzerland. It is listed as a Swiss heritage site of national significance.

Its lineage extends back to the Amerbach Cabinet, which included a collection of works by Hans Holbein purchased by the city of Basel and the University of Basel in 1661, which made it the first municipally owned and therefore open to the public museum in the world. Its collection is distinguished by an impressively wide historic span, from the early 15th century up to the immediate present. Its various areas of emphasis give it international standing as one of the most significant museums of its kind. These encompass paintings and drawings by artists active in the Upper Rhine region between 1400 and 1600, as well as the art of the 19th to 21st centuries.

The Kunstmuseum possesses the largest collection of works by the Holbein family. Further examples of Renaissance art include important pieces by such master artists as Konrad Witz, Hans Baldung (called Grien), Martin Schongauer, Lucas Cranach the Elder and Matthias Grünewald. The main features of the 17th and 18th centuries are the Flemish and Dutch schools (e.g. Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, Jan Brueghel the Elder), German and Dutch still life painting. Key works from the 19th century include the Impressionists represented by Édouard Manet, Edmond Jean de Pury, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne as well as the paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Switzerland's Arnold Böcklin and Ferdinand Hodler. In the 20th century, the focus is on works of Cubism with Picasso, Braque and Juan Gris. Expressionism is represented by such figures as Edvard Munch, Franz Marc, Oskar Kokoschka, Bernard Buffet and Emil Nolde. The collection also includes works from Constructivism, Dadaism and Surrealism and American art since 1950. Further highlights are the unique compilations of works from Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Paul Klee, Alberto Giacometti and Marc Chagall.

In the realm of more recent and contemporary art, the collection maintains substantial bodies of work by Swiss, German, French, Italian, and American artists, including Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Georg Baselitz, A.R. Penck, Brice Marden, Bruce Nauman, Jonathan Borofsky, Roni Horn, Francesco Clemente, Mimmo Paladino, Enzo Cucchi, Martin Disler, Leiko Ikemura, Markus Raetz, Rosemarie Trockel and Robert Gober.

In 1975, the Dia Art Foundation installed Untitled (In memory of Urs Graf) by Dan Flavin in the museum's front courtyard and arcade gallery. This permanent, outdoor, installation was funded and installed by the Dia Art Foundation as its first major public work. It was subsequently gifted to the Kunstmuseum in 1980.

In 1671 the city of Basel decided to make the art collection of the Amerbach cabinet accessible to the public. The collection was exhibited in the House zur Mücke [de] near the Munster of Basel and could be accessed by the public twice a week. In 1823 the public collection was joined with the before private Faesch Museum established by Remigius Faesch and in 1849 the collection moved into a larger building also near the Munster of Basel. In 1859, a new building for the museum was thought of, inspired by the paintings the Swiss painter Emilie Linder had annually deposited in the museum since 1847. As a possible location the building of the Common Readers Association [de] was mentioned or also a return to the House zur Mücke was considered. The museum included several other academic departments. A move was seen to give the art collection more room and also enable an efficient rescue of the paintings in case of a fire. Until 1864, the museum included physical and chemical departments. In 1866, also the ethnographic and antiquarian departments were moved to another location following which the artworks received two more prominent rooms. The Gottfried Keller Foundation introduced the painting of Cows drinking in the Alps by Giovanni Segantini in 1904. The Birmann Fonds, which was established to purchase paintings of Swiss painters introduced modern painters and introduced the Lac Leman from Chebrous in 1905 and Rise in space in 1910 by Ferdinand Hodler, further The Bread by Giovanni Giacometti in 1908 and the Peasants Garden by Cuno Amiet in 1914. With the Village in Pontoise from Camille Pissarro, the first impressionist painting was introduced to the Museum in 1912.

In 1936, the Museum moved to its current location. In 1939 a large body of work by German-Jewish artists, whose paintings were considered to be degenerate art by the Nazi regime in Germany, were acquired for the Kunstmuseum under the director George Schmidt. They are on display in the museum up to this day. In 1980 the Museum joined forces with the Museum for Contemporary Art, which displays artworks from the 1960s onwards. It was the first museum focused on contemporary art at the time.

In 2006, the Swiss dealer Eberhard Kornfeld donated his Rembrandt collection, including more than 100 etchings, to the Kunstmuseum Basel.