Agenda

Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-90), writer and playwright, was also a passionate painter and illustrator.  The permanent exhibition showcases his visual art as it relates to his literary œuvre, and also charts his life, the influence of his work and the relevance of his ideas to today’s world.

The visit starts with an introductory film. The exhibition also looks at his life through the people who mattered to him and who inspired his work.

The interactive globe explores the international response to his work and the journeys that inspired him. There is also an interactive map of Switzerland that allows visitors to explore Dürrenmatt’s links to Basel, Locarno, and other Swiss towns.

In the grand hall, there are gouaches, as well as a selection of drawings and engravings on key themes from his work: the Minotaur, the Tower of Babel and Atlas.

The CDN was built by Mario Botta around Dürrenmatt’s first home and also comprises a second villa, a studio, a pool and gardens. The museum showcases this unique cultural heritage.

At the heart of life, movement shapes the trajectories of individuals, objects and ideas. Because of its geographical position and its history, Neuchâtel has naturally developed strong relationships with foreign countries.

Migratory movements and the circulation of goods and techniques have been driving forces in its development. They have also contributed to the construction and definition of its identities.

On the occasion of its new permanent exhibition (Mouvements), the Museum puts its collections into dialogue through the prism of movement, a notion that is both individual and universal.

The exhibition offers a new and interdisciplinary perspective on mobility. What are the profiles and motivations of migrants?  What role do wars and international trade play in movement? What is the nature of the goods produced and the strategies implemented to export them? What are the links between trade networks and the slave trade? What do artists seek under distant skies? What obstacles do migrants encounter in their daily lives? A journey through small and large stories where memory and the richness of destinies are reflected.

The exhibition shows works by artists who are less often exhibited in the Style Sapin. It aims to explore this derivative style of Art Nouveau.

It presents drawings, studies, ceramics and textile works from the decade during which Charles L’Eplattenier (1874-1946) and his pupils (including Le Corbusier) adapted to the particularities of the fauna and flora of the Jura and developed the Style Sapin in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

They applied this particular style to industrial and decorative design and architecture.

After training as a graphic designer, René Myrha (1939 in Delsberg.Delémont, Canton of Jura) travelled to Paris and Milan in the 1960s to explore the latest developments in art and design.

Using new silkscreen techniques and displaying a great flair for creating spatial impressions, he produced a powerful oeuvre that encompasses drawings, paintings in acrylic and oil, sculptures, and reliefs.

His works evoke elementary forces oscillating between form and volume and dynamically conjoining constructed and organic spaces and architectures.

The exhibition relates to one of the main focuses of the Kunstmuseum Thun’s collection: Swiss Pop Art. On view is a representative cross-section of Myrha’s oeuvre, from Pop Art to his current engagement with figural painting and sculpture.

“Ulysses”, written by the Irish exile James Joyce (1882-1941) in Trieste, Zurich and Paris, is considered one of the most influential novels of the 20th century.

Exactly 100 years after its first publication on 2 February 1922, the exhibition portrays the genesis, the reception, the content and form of “Ulysses” in a hundred objects, documents and photographs.

They are the story of the publication, the criticism and scandals that followed it. The author told the story of three people on an ordinary day in Dublin in the early summer of 1904, creating a multifaceted portrait of the city.

He broke with the prevailing conventions and used poetic language and stylistic diversity, a Marcel Proust avant la lettre.

Switzerland is often described as a perfect country: breath-taking scenery, sparkling clean cities and highly efficient infrastructure. The Swiss only know about those things from the news. Political upheavals happen elsewhere, and humanitarian involvement and “good deeds” are part of Switzerland’s self-image. A little paradise in the middle of Europe.

On closer inspection, contradictions emerge. So what is it, an idyllic paradise, or a staid backwater of provincial attitudes? A nation open to the world and all it holds, or a stronghold of conservativism?

This question isn’t so easy to answer. It depends not only on the perspective but also on who’s answering. In addition, there are often a number of facets that may be diametrically opposed. Switzerland is full of bewildering contrasts.

The exhibition Wunderbar widersprüchlich  (Amazingly ambivalent) examines some of the views held by insiders, and those on the outside, and uncovers contradictory aspects of Switzerland. It aims to encourage visitors to self-reflect and their relationship with Switzerland.

Jenny Holzer (1950), one of the leading contemporary artists of her generation, has curated an exhibition of the work of Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), widely regarded as one of the most important and influential artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Holzer is internationally renowned for her exploration and subversion of public language through the use of nontraditional forms. Bourgeois’s psychologically charged work deals with the realm of human emotion: love, desire, dependency, sexuality, rejection, jealousy, and abandonment.

The exhibition presents an encounter between two giants of American art, Bourgeois’s work as seen through Holzer’s eyes.

Holzer approaches Bourgeois’s art through the lens of her extensive writing. Works from all stages of Bourgeois’s oeuvre — sculptures, installations, paintings, drawings, prints, and texts — have been selected to create a series of thematic groupings.

The title of the exhibition (Party for Öyvind) quotes an invitation sent out by Patty and Claes Oldenburg, who in 1967 threw a party to celebrate Öyvind Fahlström’s birthday in New York.

Öyvind Fahlström (1928-1976) studied art history and archaeology in Stockholm and Rome. On moving to Rome in 1952 he immersed himself in the local art scene

In 1961 he travelled to the USA on a stipend together with his wife and collaborator, Barbro Östlihn. The couple’s first friends in New York were Patty and Claes Oldenburg. Fahlström, moreover, was able to take over Robert Rauschenberg’s studio and he , he experienced the rise of Pop Art and happenings at first hand. He stayed on in the city up to his death.  Öyvind met Tinguely in 1955 when the latter came to Stockholm for his first solo show in Sweden.

The exhibition shows the major works and the (artistic) life of the artist.

The exhibition Japan. Arts and Life presents one hundred and seventy works from the Montgomery Collection, one of the largest and best known collections of Japanese art outside Japan.

The collection takes in artworks dating from the 12th to the 20th century, including textiles, furniture, paintings, religious and everyday objects – carefully selected from the over one thousand objects collected over a lifetime by Jeffrey Montgomery.

Renowned worldwide, the collection displays an extraordinary richness and a very singular substance: it is a collection of ‘oriental art’, and at the same time it expressed a “folk culture” reinterpreted in very elevated aesthetic terms by the elegant and refined choices made by the collector who had dedicated his entire life to it.

According to common belief, Islam has an absolute ban on images and is hostile to pictorial representations, quite in contrast to Christianity. But is this actually true? Are images categorically forbidden in Islam? And what about Christianity: doesn’t the Second Commandment state “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image”?

The exhibition In the name of the Image. Imagery and between Cult and Prohibition in Islam and Christianity (Im Namen des Bildes. Das Bild zwischen Kult und Verbot in Islam und Christentum) deals with such questions on a comparative, cross-cultural basis. It traces the strategies Islam and Christianity applied over the centuries to deal with aniconism.

The focus is on the Middle Ages, that is, the period from the 6th to the 16th century. During this time, the question of images was debated extensively by theologians. The 136 works on display cover a geographic area that stretches from Latin Western Europe (Kingdom of France and Holy Roman Empire) to the eastern Mediterranean (Byzantine Empire and later Ottoman Empire) to Western Asia (Persia) and as far as South Asia (Mughal Empire in India).

Complementary to the exhibition, the museum is organizing a series of lectures to address certain aspects in more depth, and in which we get to hear what world-renowned experts have to say on the subject.