Agenda

The topic of two exhibitions at two museums in Basel focuses on the humans and how they shape the world they inhabit.

The focus at the Museum of Ethnography (26.01.2021 – 23.01.2022) is on the following themes: relationships, orientation, traces, and imaginations. Old European masters, African masks, Asian shadow plays along with an orator’s stool from Oceania tell about the multitude and variability of relationships.

The exhibits reflect relations of humans amongst each other, with the animal world, as well as with ancestors who, in turn, exert influence on human life.

Mobility, both mental and physical, has always been an issue for humans. Wherever people travel, live and work, they leave traces in the landscape.

A series of artworks not only depict cultural landscapes but also scenes of industrialization and environmental degradation.

Large paintings and textiles from across the world show how humans immerse themselves in imaginary, surreal or cubist worlds, forests, and cities and render them artistically.

The exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel (27.11.2021–24.4.2022, Making the World. Spiritual Worlds) centres on the human spirit and how it lends meaning to the world through belief and religious imagery.

On the occasion of the anniversary of 50 years of voting rights for women in Switzerland, the museum presents female costumes and accessories from the period from 1600 to the present day.

The exhibition (Robes Politiques. Frauen Macht Mode)  is theme-based in approach, without chronological ordering. The clothing of influential women is examined in six chapters from various viewpoints.

Fifty textile objects illustrate the tension between femininity and a position of power, between scandal and idealisation, between populism and representation, demonstrating how clothing is deployed for strategic purposes. The specific examples from various centuries and countries reveal continuous elements, developments and changes.

The search for precision in time measurement has been a driving force behind innovations in the watch industry since the 17th century.

The pendulum, the balance spring and then the quartz make it possible to multiply the precision of clocks. From the Second World War onwards, the precise measurement of time passed from the hands of watchmakers and astronomers to those of physicists.

From 1967, the measurement is determined by a microscopic phenomenon: the oscillation of caesium atoms. One femtosecond – 0000 0000 0000 0001 seconds is measurable.

This precision, hidden to ordinary people, is essential to the organisation of today’s human society: geolocation, navigation, transport, telecommunications, possible thanks to the extreme precision of the time measurement.