Kunstmuseum Basel

The Kunstmuseum Basel | Present is located about 10 minutes away on St. Alban-Rheinweg 60 in CH-4010 Basel.

The Kunstmuseum Basel is one of the world's most renowned museums of its kind. Its world-famous collection, the Basel Public Art Collection, today comprises around 4,000 paintings, sculptures, installations and videos as well as 300,000 drawings and prints from seven centuries. The historical core of the collection is the Cabinet of Basel collector Basilius Amerbach. It was bought by the city and the university in 1661 and opened to the public in 1671. The collection of the Kunstmuseum Basel is therefore considered the oldest public art collection of a community.

The Upper Rhine Renaissance is represented by the world's largest collection of works by the Holbein family as well as significant works by Konrad Witz, Martin Schongauer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Matthias Grünewald and others. A highlight in the 19th century are extensive groups of paintings by Arnold Böcklin and Ferdinand Hodler as well as outstanding works by Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Vincent van Gogh. In the art of the 20th century, the main emphasis on cubism (Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger), the German Expressionism (Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franz Marc, Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka), the Abstract Expressionism (Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Franz Kline) and American Art since 1960 (Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Donald Judd, Cy Twombly). From recent decades, important groups of works by artists such as Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, On Kawara, Louise Lawler, Simon Starling, Olafur Eliasson, Rosemarie Trockel, Pierre Huyghe and Gabriel Orozco join.

The constant growth of the collection and the desire for a contemporary presentation made it necessary to move the collection within Basel several times over the centuries, most recently in 1936 in our present main building on St. Alban-Graben. In 1980, with the opening of the Museum of Contemporary Art on St. Alban-Rheinweg - one of the world's first museums of contemporary art - a first major architectural expansion took place. Today it operates under Kunstmuseum Basel | Presence.

In the meantime, another house has been added: opposite the main building - and connected to it underground - a new building has been built in which special exhibitions as well as collection presentations are shown. At the same time, the city of Basel has gained another architectural highlight with the building designed by the local architecture firm Christ & Gantenbein. With the new building and the main building, the Kunstmuseum Basel now consists of three houses.