Annual press release 2016 Exhibition Program. The Year of Collections

On February 19, the Fine Art Museum Berne, in collaboration with the Paul Klee Center, is opening the exhibition Chinese Whispers: Recent Art from the Sigg and M+ Sigg Collections. This show picks up the thread of the Mahjong exhibition from 2005 in which Chinese contemporary art was presented on a large scale in the West and attracted great interest internationally. Chinese Whispers offers an in-depth view of art production in China over the last 15 years and the opportunity to explore this nation from the angle of artists ranging from Ai Weiwei to Zhuang Hui.

For the very first time, the Fine Art Museum Berne is charting the acquisition history of its modern masters collection. In the exhibition Modern Masters: “Degenerate” Art at the Museum of Fine Arts Berne, beginning April 7, we will be showing just what makes up our internationally famous collection and how the works of artists—whose art was officially banned during the Nazi Dictatorship in the Third Reich—found their way to the Fine Art Museum Berne.

From June 3, the Fine Art Museum Berne is presenting artworks that have hitherto not been exhibited together in Switzerland in Without Restraint: Works by Mexican Women Artists from the Daros Latinamerica Collection. The multifarious and provocative works of these artists convey insights into crucial aspects of Mexican art over the last decades.

A group of paintings comprising three panels by Niklaus Manuel constitute the focal point of the small exhibition Bern’s Lost Altar: Niklaus Manuel and the Panels of the Dominican Church in Bern. Niklaus Manuel was the leading painter of early modern times in Berne. The panels, belonging to the Museum of Fine Arts Berne Collection, were presumably part of an altarpiece of the Dominican Church in Bern, now known as the Französische Kirche (French Church). They were extracted from the altarpiece framework and sold as individual works of art. The exhibition zeroes in on this process of reassessing pictures and their metamorphosis from the components of an altarpiece into works of art.

Eminent private collections and museums are home to the work of the Ticinese artist Cesare Lucchini (born 1941), and the Fine Arts Museum Berne can boast the same. From September 23, the exhibition “What Remains”: The World of Cesare Lucchini is presenting the entire oeuvre of the artist for the very first time. The show views his work in the context of existential art. Additionally integrated in the exhibition will be works by other artists, among them Alberto Giacometti, Robert Müller, or Hans Josephson.

From November 12, a private collection of the superlative can be admired at the Fine Art Museum Berne: LIECHTENSTEIN. The Princely Collections. In a large-scale presentation we are opening a doorway to an extraordinary and splendid world spanning five centuries of European art. The exhibition affords the public a representative cross-section of the great treasures of the Princes of Liechtenstein.

On view from November 18, the exhibition Ted Scapa: The Artist will this time not be mounting the man as creator of cartoons and children’s book but rather Ted Scapa as an artist. His paintings, sculptures, and design objects stand out on account of their wit and spontaneity, vitality and playfulness. Ted Scapa invented a narrative visual language that is remarkably simple and packs everyone directly as if by magic.  

Contact person: Stefania Mazzamuto, , Tel.: +41 31 328 09 21
Images: Marie Louise Suter, , Tel.: +41 31 328 09 53

Credit Suisse has been a sponsor of the Fine Art Museum Berne for 20 years now. This established partnership sustains and creates room for development and new ideas such as the “Credit Suisse Förderpreis Videokunst,” which the two institutions initiated jointly.

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