The Other Collection
Homage to Hildy and Ernst Beyeler

19 August 2007 – 6 January 2008


10 Years of Fondation Beyeler
60 Years of Galerie Beyeler


In 2007 the Fondation Beyeler celebrates the tenth anniversary of the inauguration of the museum, founded by Ernst and Hildy Beyeler on the basis of their art dealership, Galerie Beyeler. We plan to mark the occasion with a special exhibition, the first to be devoted to the now sixty-year history of the gallery. About 16,000 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper – not including prints and editions – passed through the premises at Bäumleingasse 9, the gallery’s location since its inception. From this overwhelming number a selection of masterworks will be made, and placed in a dialogue with the museum’s collection. This “Other Collection” will transform the Fondation Beyeler into a small musée imaginaire, in which many splendid works that have long since entered major public and private collections around the world will be reunited. Many a spectacular museum acquisition, many an unforgettable exhibition would have been unthinkable without the commitment of Ernst Beyeler, whose merits also include friendly consultancy and custodianship services for some of the most significant private collections of the twentieth century, and the maintenance of extraordinary contacts throughout the art world.

Masterpieces by Braque, Bonnard, Cézanne, Dubuffet, Gauguin, Giacometti, van Gogh, Gris, Kandinsky, Klee, Léger, Miró, Mondrian, Monet, and Picasso – to name only some of the highlights – will be on view. Works by such exemplary representatives in our own collection will be supplemented by loans to form coherent groups and ensembles. Beyond this, the personal viewpoint and special preferences of the Beyelers will be illuminated. Works they relinquished will stand beside those they permitted themselves to retain, forming an homage to a life’s work, a portrait in pictures of a brilliant art dealer to whom we owe a site of vital and inspiring encounters with fine art.