An exhibition hall in the new extension building of the Kunstmuseum Basel, completed in 2016, Canton of Basel-City, Switzerland
Some background information:
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 heritage site of national significance.
Its lineage extends back to the Amerbach Cabinet, including a collection of works by the painter Hans Holbein purchased by the city and the University of Basel in 1661, which made it the first municipally owned museum open to the public 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, and on the art of the 19th to 21st centuries.
I can only speak for myself, but for me the most impressive section of the museum was the modern one, starting with the impressionists of the 19th century, like Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne, to works from Vincent van Gogh, Arnold Boecklin, Ferdinand Hodler, Edvard Munch, Franz Marc, Oskar Kokoschka, Emil Nolde, Henry Rosseau, Gustav Klimt, Auguste Rodin and the famous painters and of the 20th century, like Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Paul Klee, Marc Chagall, Lyonel Feininger and Salvador Dali, through to contemporary artists like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Joseph Beuys and Georg Baselitz. I could even name many more world-renowned painters and sculptors.
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" near the Munster of Basel and could be accessed by the public twice a week. In 1823 the public collection was joined with the Faesch Museum, established by Remigius Faesch, and in 1849 the collection moved into a larger building also near the Munster of Basel. In 1936 the Museum moved to its current location.
In the year of 1939 a large body of work by German-Jewish artists, whose paintings were considered to be degenerate art by the Nazi-Regime in Germany, could be saved by the Kunstmuseum, were brought to Switzerland and 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.
The Kunstmuseum's current and main building was designed and constructed between 1931and 1936 by the architects Paul Bonatz and Rudolf Christ, adjacent to the former building of the Swiss National Bank in Basel. In 1980, a building besides the Rhine in St. Alban neighborhood was added as an additional location of the Kunstmuseum. In 2016, a new building was completed, which is joined with the main building through an underpass. The upper floor of the new building houses temporary exhibitions and the middle floor as well as a part of the ground floor the permanent collection of contemporary art.
Basel (resp. Basle) is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine in the immediate vicinity of the French and German borders. With about 180,000 inhabitants Basel is Switzerland's third-most-populous city (after Zurich and Geneva).The official language of Basel is (the Swiss variety of Standard) German.
Basel is commonly considered to be the cultural capital of Switzerland. The city is famous for its many museums, ranging from the Kunstmuseum, the first collection of art accessible to the public in the world and the largest museum of art in Switzerland, to the Museum of Contemporary Art, the first public museum of this type in Europe. Forty museums are spread throughout the city-canton, making Basel one of the largest cultural centres in Europe in relation to its size and population.
Today, the name of the city is internationally known through institutions like Basel Accords, the art fair Art Basel and the football club FC Basel. The Swiss chemical industry operates largely from Basel, and Basel also has a large pharmaceutical industry. International companies like Novartis, Syngenta, Ciba Specialty Chemicals, Clariant, Hoffmann-La Roche, Basilea Pharmaceutica and Actelion are headquartered there. Finally, it should also be mentioned that in 2019, the American human resources consulting firm Mercer ranked Basel among the ten most liveable cities in the world together with the two other Swiss cities of Zurich and Geneva.