Agenda

The exhibition (animalistic! Animals and hybrid creatures in Antiquity) delves into the world of wild animals and ferocious hybrid creatures that have always fired the imagination.

The show presents the status of animals in ancient civilisations and encounters monstrous creatures such as centaurs, griffins, the sphinx and the Chimera.

Many of these hybrid creatures originated in the Middle East and Egypt. In Greek culture, they were a symbol of a strange, dangerous and chaotic world, against which the Greek heroes on their adventures in foreign lands had to prevail.

The exhibition is a Cooperation between four Basel museums: Museum der Kulturen Basel, Antikenmuseum Basel, Pharmaziemuseum der Universität Basel and Historisches Museum Basel (see also Swiss Spectator, Animalistic! One Theme-Four Exhibitions, Events, 20 October 2021, and www.tierischbasel.ch).

Francis Alÿs  (1959) not only reimagines the city, he also creates narratives, spreads rumors and maps the social fabric of the city.

This show presents an overview of the artist’s video work of the last thirty years, with an emphasis on one of the central themes in Francis Alÿs’s practice, namely walking.

In these videos, shot in a number of countries, the imaginary spaces of childhood blend with the fictional spaces of the artist, offering him an entry point when dealing with unknown situations or contexts. In his projects, the artist reveals the deeply subversive potential of play and fiction, while making it possible, short of refashioning reality, to imagine and see it differently.

The city is the material of his art. Over the years, he extended his works to Havana,  London, Venice, Kabul, Jerusalem and other places, reimagining each city through his itineraries.

The exhibition (Lyonel Feininger – La ville et la mer) presents the graphic work of the artist Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) on the occasion of his 150th birthday. Lyonel Feininger, born in the United States, made a career in Germany and became an important figure in the European avant-garde.

Printmaking was an important phase in his career. Between 1918 and 1922 he devoted himself to the intense production of woodcuts. This technique deepened Feininger’s formal and conceptual research, allowing him to return to painting and drawing. In 1919 he participated in the founding of the Bauhaus movement in Germany.

The exhibition presents a rich selection of etchings, xylographies and lithographs, as well as drawings, archival documents and previously unseen objects from private collections.