Museum of Fine Arts Bern

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Museum of Fine Arts Bern - Wikipedia

Coordinates: 46°57′04″N 7°26′36″E / 46.9511°N 7.4434°E

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Kunstmuseum Bern


Established	1879
Location	8–12 Hodler Street Bern, Switzerland
Type	Art museum
Director	Nina Zimmer
Website	www.kunstmuseumbern.ch

The Museum of Fine Arts Bern (German: Kunstmuseum Bern), established in 1879 in Bern, is the museum of fine arts of the de facto capital of Switzerland.

Collections

Its holdings run from the Middle Ages to the present. It houses works by Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Edmond Jean de Pury, Ferdinand Hodler, Méret Oppenheim, Ricco Wassmer and Adolf Wölfli. The collection consists of over 3,000 paintings and sculptures as well as 48,000 drawings, prints, photographs, videos and films.

Gurlitt collections

In May 2014, the museum was named sole heir in the will of Cornelius Gurlitt, the German collector associated with the 2012 Munich artworks discovery.^[1]^[2]^[3] The authorities had found over 1,400 artworks, many of them suspected to be stolen from European Jews by the Nazis, in Gurlitt's homes in Munich and Salzburg. The museum was given six months to decide whether it would accept the bequest and its terms.^[4] The most important provision required that the museum conduct research into the provenance of the paintings and make restitution where needed to the heirs of the original owners. The museum director, Matthias Frehner, pledged that it would do so if it accepted the bequest.^[5] The German government quietly urged the museum to accept the collection in order to provide a neutral place where research into its history could continue. (There was concern that if the collection were dispersed among Gurlitt's distant relatives, there would be no guarantee that they would conduct the research properly.) Determining whether or not to accept required much deliberation on the part of the museum board, work by its legal team, and significant fundraising from Swiss donors, so that the museum would not be reliant on German funding that could taint the neutrality of the provenance research.^[6] In November 2014 the board voted to accept the collection.^[7]

In August 2018, an episode of Fake or Fortune featured the director of the museum, Nina Zimmer, asking the team to investigate what appears to be the sole British piece of art in the Gurlitt collection.^[8]

Kornfeld collection

In 2024, Eberhard W. Kornfeld bequeathed five paintings to the museum, including Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Junkerboden (1919) and Alberto Giacometti's Caroline (1965).^[9]

References

^ "Press Release". www.kunstmuseumbern.ch. 7 May 2014. Retrieved 17 March 2016.
^ "'Nazi art' hoarder Gurlitt makes Swiss museum sole heir". BBC News. 7 May 2014. Retrieved 7 May 2014.
^ "Le Musée des beaux-arts de Berne légataire du « trésor nazi » de Cornelius Gurlitt". Le Monde. Reuters and AP. 7 May 2014. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
^ "Possible Rodin and Degas works found at Gurlitt home". BBC. 24 July 2014. Retrieved 24 July 2014.
^ Lane, Mary M. (20 November 2014). "Swiss Museum Close to Accepting Trove of Nazi Art". The Wall Street Journal. p. A12. Retrieved 13 March 2016.
^ Lane, p. A12.
^ "Swiss museum to accept Gurlitt 'Nazi art'". BBC News. 24 November 2014. Retrieved 29 April 2016.
^ "Hildebrand Gurlitt's Disputed Henry Moore Will Have a Starring Role in the BBC's Hit Art Detective Series". artnet News. 29 March 2018. Retrieved 3 August 2019.
^ Catherine Hickley (28 March 2024), Swiss dealer Eberhard Kornfeld bequeathed Kirchner, Giacometti works to Bern Kunstmuseum The Art Newspaper.

External links

Media related to Kunstmuseum Bern at Wikimedia Commons

Official Museum of Fine Arts Bern website — info on history + collections.
Credit-suisse.com: Interview with the Director of Bern Museum of Fine Arts

46°57′04″N 7°26′36″E / 46.9511°N 7.4434°E / 46.9511; 7.4434

v t e Degenerate art
Degenerate Art Exhibition Degenerate Art auction
Artists	Jussuf Abbo Jankel Adler Ernst Barlach Max Beckmann Marc Chagall Lovis Corinth Otto Dix Max Ernst Conrad Felixmüller Otto Freundlich Albert Gleizes Ludwig Godenschweg Otto Griebel George Grosz Erich Heckel Karl Hofer Alexej von Jawlensky Wassily Kandinsky Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Paul Klee Oskar Kokoschka Käthe Kollwitz Alfred Kubin Wilhelm Lachnit Wilhelm Lehmbruck Max Liebermann Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler August Macke Franz Marc Ludwig Meidner Jean Metzinger Wilhelm Morgner Otto Mueller Emil Nolde Max Pechstein Pablo Picasso Christian Rohlfs Egon Schiele Oskar Schlemmer Rudolf Schlichter Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Lothar Schreyer
Related	Censorship in Nazi Germany Racial policy of Nazi Germany Gurlitt Collection Hildebrand Gurlitt Cornelius Gurlitt Museum of Fine Arts Bern

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