Drawing on the Kunstmuseum Basel’s extraordinary permanent collection, this exhibition places in juxtaposition canonical masterpieces in relationship to lesser-known works in order to explore the complex political, religious and cultural history of Basel. It is organized around selected moments in Basel’s varied history of ideas and everyday practices and the lives of individuals associated with the city: the humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, the painting The Dead Christ in the Tomb by Hans Holbein the Younger, the illustrator and naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian, the historian and art historian Jacob Burckhardt, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the 1912 Basel Peace Congress, the figure skaters Frick and Frack, the inventor of LSD Albert Hofmann, and the women’s rights activist Iris von Roten.
For more information: https://kunstmuseumbasel.ch/en/exhibitions/2018/basel-short-stories
