Agenda

Many European and American artists, writers and other celebrities lived, worked and died in Switzerland. One of them is Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926).

The exhibition is focused on the years he spent in Valais – from 1921 to 1926. It attempts to answer fundamental but far-reaching questions about the final years of his life.

What led Rilke to settle in Valais and why did he remain? What shape did Rilke’s connections take – to the landscape, to people, to nature, art, and architecture, to history and religion, to the economic and social realities of the time?

The multimedia exhibit introduces Rilke’s view on Valais through pictures, letters, books, and personal objects as well as a slide show and recorded poetry readings.

The new permanent exhibition (Chintz. How a Fabric Conquered the World), interweaves local and global history and considers Switzerland’s links to the wider world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

It sheds light on the involvement of many Swiss people and businesses in key chapters of the modern period, including industrialisation, trade, colonisation and slavery.

Traders in Geneva imported fabrics from India to sell in Bordeaux, from where they were sent on to Brazil. Merchants in Basel set up in Nantes to better fund and combine cargoes for the slave trade. Officers from Neuchâtel served the powerful Dutch East India Company. Swiss plantation owners or managers made use of slave labour. The printed cotton fabrics are regarded as the first product of globalisation.

The exhibition forms part of the new Chintz Centre.

Between the 17th and 19th centuries, printed cotton fabrics transformed Switzerland into one of the world’s leading textile-producing nations. the cotton products, along with weaving and spinning, played a key role in the country’s industrialisation and cemented its role in global trade.

An interactive map documents the various centres of manufacture in Switzerland in the 18th century.

The exhibition shows over 100 works by renowned female artists from the circle of friends of Ursi and Bernhard Luginbühl.

The show includes works by Niki de Saint-Phalle (1930-2002), Eva Aeppli (1925-2015), Lilly Keller (1929-2018), Sabina Hofkunst (1947), Florence Gilliéron (1954) and Ursi Luginbühl (1936-2017).

The tour of the exhibition begins in the lower part of the museum
with numerous original works by the sculptor and draughtsman Bernhard Luginbühl (1929-2011).

A different atmosphere is present on the upper floor. The works of the six women  impressively reflect their artistic’ feelings and thoughts as well as the diversity of materials.