“Is that really Zurich?” Asks Mayor Corine Mauch (61) when she stands for the first time after five years of construction in the spacious foyer of the extension building of the Kunsthaus and thinks of the narrow streets of the old town. “It’s big,” she said yesterday, Wednesday at the press conference at the opening, “it’s great!”
In fact, according to plans by the British star architect David Chipperfield (67), the cube is a great success. With the gray of the concrete walls and marble stairs as well as the golden shimmering handrails and elevator doors made of brass, the CHF 206 million house looks like a large safe in the middle of the banking city.
The Kunsthaus can more than double its exhibition space with the 5000 square meters in the Chipperfield building and is now the largest museum in Switzerland. A budget of CHF 25.1 million (plus 25 percent) is expected for 2022 and 375,000 visitors are expected. In recent years the number has been below 300,000.
“The property of strangers”
But the Kunsthaus can also keep up across borders and is now playing in the Champions League of European exhibition houses. “Today the collection is one of the largest in Europe,” says museum director Christoph Becker (61). And Mayor Mauch enthuses: “Another milestone for the cultural city of Zurich.”
Mainly thanks to the permanent loan of the controversial Bührle collection on the second floor, Zurich ranks right behind the Impressionist Mecca Paris in terms of important French impressionists within Europe. And thanks to the additional space, you can now present 17 percent of the collection instead of just 10 as before.
At the beginning of the 19th century the Kunsthaus had a small, insignificant collection. And it did not grow through its own efforts. “Most of the things I didn’t buy myself,” says Becker. “80 percent are gifts or loans – the property of strangers.” Since Switzerland is not a feudal state, the bourgeoisie contributed a conglomerate of smaller collections.
Focus on collections
And so the new safe is also a collection box for valuable items on loan from various art lovers: there is the “Hubert Looser Collection” with its focus on American post-war art, next to the Expressionist collection of the Holocaust survivor Werner Merzbacher (93) and above that that of Emil, of German origin Georg Bührle (1890–1956), who supplied weapons to the Nazis from Zurich.
“Merzbach and Bührle are not opposed to each other,” says Becker, “they are lined up next to each other.” It almost seems as if the Kunsthaus has a fig leaf with the “Werner and Gabriele Merzbach Collection” so that it can show the Bührle collection with a clearer conscience. In any case, one wants to face the current discussion with a separate documentation room for the Bührle Collection.
By concentrating on collections in the new building, the Kunsthaus has changed the exhibition concept throughout the museum. “We have rearranged all the collections,” says Becker, “you won’t find anything in the same place anymore.” As a result, the walk through the museum is varied, but the public does not get to see a chronological presentation – old masters can sometimes be found next to modern art.
A thrown together world-class collection – with controversial content.
On Saturday and Sunday 9./10. October from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. free tour of the new Kunsthaus.
Looted art and art theft
The opening of the extension made international headlines in advance: “Kanon und Kanonen”, was the headline of the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung” in its last issue and referred to the groundbreaking collection of the Swiss arms dealer Emil Georg Bührle (1890–1956) 170 works are exhibited in the new building, including many important impressionists. Historians complain that the German-born Bührle made his fortune before and during the Second World War by selling war material, primarily to Nazi Germany, and thus financed his collection. He bought many of the important paintings, including the Monet picture “Poppy Field near Vétheuil” (1879), from Jews in need – they are so-called refugee goods. Other works are even looted art that the Nazis stole from the Jews. The aforementioned Monet painting is finally part of the “robbery of the century” (Blick) in 2008: armed men stole it on February 10 from the former exhibition site in Zurich’s Seefeld, along with three other works by Cézanne, van Gogh and Degas. Total value: 180 million francs. In 2012 all four pictures are back and can now be seen permanently in the extension of the Kunsthaus Zürich.
Blick front page from February 12, 2008.
The opening of the extension made international headlines in advance: “Kanon und Kanonen”, was the headline of the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung” in its last issue and referred to the groundbreaking collection of the Swiss arms dealer Emil Georg Bührle (1890–1956) 170 works are exhibited in the new building, including many important impressionists. Historians complain that the German-born Bührle made his fortune before and during the Second World War by selling war material, primarily to Nazi Germany, and thus financed his collection. Many of the important paintings, including the Monet picture “Poppy Field near Vétheuil” (1879), he bought from Jews in need – they are so-called refugee goods. Other works are even looted art that the Nazis stole from the Jews. The aforementioned Monet painting is finally part of the “robbery of the century” (Blick) in 2008: armed men stole it on February 10 from the former exhibition site in Zurich’s Seefeld, along with three other works by Cézanne, van Gogh and Degas. Total value: 180 million francs. In 2012 all four pictures are back and can now be seen permanently in the extension of the Kunsthaus Zürich.