Art Is Collected and Preserved for Its Monetary Cultural and Aesthetic Value
The Museum Rietberg—History, Drove and Activities
ALEXANDRA VON PRZYCHOWSKI
Curator for the Arts of China and the Himalayan Region, Museum Rietberg
HOUSING AN EXCELLENT drove of arts from Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Aboriginal Americas, the Museum Rietberg in Zurich is one of the leading museums in Europe for the arts of not-European cultures. It is renowned among scholars, collectors and art lovers earthbroad for its drove, also equally for its innovative and high-quality exhibition programme. The museum's vision is to focus on the fascinating multifariousness of artistic expressions and to enhance interest in, and understanding of, foreign cultures, community and beliefs.
The historical buildings
The museum is situated in one of the most beautiful parks of Zurich. Walking upwards the path through the landscaped garden, passing along exotic trees and native scrub, the visitor volition catch sight of the main edifice of the museum, the Villa Wesendonck, built in 1856 and enlarged by a modern extension in 2007 (1). Two further stately mansions, both dating to 1886, complete the ensemble.
Villa Wesendonck is imbued with historical importance. It was the home of the family of Otto Wesendonck (1815–1896), a wealthy High german silk merchant, who moved to Zurich via New York for business organisation in 1851. Wesendonck bought a hill in a higher place the shore of Lake Zurich and commissioned Leonhard Zeugherr (1812–1866), the Swiss builder, to design a classical mansion in the mode of the Villa Alani in Rome. The planning of the park and gardens was entrusted to a landscape builder, Theodor Froebel (1810–1893). Finally, in 1857, the family unit was able to move into the stately business firm, which soon became a magnet for the cultivated guild of Zurich. Otto Wesendonck and his wife, Mathilde (1828–1902), welcomed and generously supported a great number of artists, intellectuals and scientists, including the composers, Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) and Franz Liszt (1811–1886), the Swiss poets, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (1825–1898) and Gottfried Keller (1819–1890), and the German architect, Gottfried Semper (1803–1879).1
The couple became especially taken with Richard Wagner (1813–1883), the famous composer. They even bought a house side by side to their villa and invited him to alive there. Wagner stayed in this "Asylum on the Light-green Hill"—as he lovingly called it—for fifteen months. During this time, he not only worked on the manuscript of Tristan and Isolde, but also wrote a sketch for a project he never realised: an opera on an episode of the life of the Buddha, named The Victors. Having been introduced in 1854 to the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), Wagner began to read extensively about Indian religions, specially Buddhism. Some of these new ideas clearly influenced his later works. Shortly, Wagner's friendship with the lady of the firm, Mathilde Wesendonck, grew—if we are to believe his letters—into an ardent love. This complicated state of affairs eventually led to his departure from Zurich in Baronial 1858, leaving behind his wife, Minna, and his muse, Mathilde.
A few years subsequently, in 1871, the Wesendonck family unit returned to Germany and Adolf Rieter-Rothpletz (1817–1882), a textile industrialist from Winterthur, bought the estate. His son, Fritz Rieter-Bodmer, had two more houses built on the estate: the Park-Villa Rieter, in the German renaissance mode, and the Villa Schönberg, in an English country business firm way with gothic elements. The estate remained in the hands of the Rieter-Bodmer family until later on the 2d Globe War, when information technology was purchased by the City of Zurich and turned into a public museum. The houses, including their outbuildings and the unabridged park, are today listed as cultural heritage sites. They accept been beautifully preserved and advisedly renovated, assuasive minor interior adaption to be used as exhibition galleries, deli, studios for education programmes, and offices. The well-kept park still preserves its one-time appearance of a tardily 19th century statescaped garden. Strolling through the green park, the visitor is able to experience a range of different landscape images: an alley canopied by large trees, a luxuriant forested hill, large connecting open spaces framed by densely growing plants and copse, and a scenic outpost overlooking the lake that permit for an extended view of the Alps.
The collection of Eduard von der Heydt and the founding of the museum
The Museum Rietberg was founded in 1952 by the Urban center of Zurich to house the famous drove of non-European Art of Baron Eduard von der Heydt (1882–1964). In 1945, the city bought the estate of the Villa Wesendonck. When the citizens of Zurich decided in a public vote in 1949 to turn the mansion into a public museum, von der Heydt donated his entire drove to the city.
A native of Wuppertal in Frg, von der Heydt came from a respected collecting family. Information technology is said that his fascination for Asian fine art resulted from his interest in the thoughts of the philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer. However, he soon broadened his view and began ownership fine art from Africa, Oceania and Pre-Colombian America as well. Von der Heydt's concept was ars una—"in that location is simply ane fine art"—as he believed that creative creation can be found everywhere, in every century, on every continent. No other collector at the fourth dimension nerveless in such variety: works from Japan, Prc, India, New Guinea, Cameroon, Congo, too as paintings by Cezanne, Van Gogh and Picasso. His drove once included more than 3000 works of by and large non-European art.
Although von der Heydt never travelled to Asia or Africa, he bought artworks from respected dealers in Europe and the US. From the beginning of his collecting activeness, he exhibited his works of art to the public. As early as 1922, he showed them in spaces within his private domicile in Amsterdam (2). In 1927, he opened a public cafeteria in Zaandvoort, a embankment resort well-nigh Amsterdam. In this Museum Lunch Room (MULURU), he exhibited the art objects according to his idea of ars una: Indian statues facing African masks, Chinese Buddhas beside Romanesque Madonnas. In 1926, he acquired the Monte Verità in Ascona and enlarged the estate with a second modern hotel building. From 1930 onwards, he made the place his permanent residence, and in 1937, he fifty-fifty obtained Swiss citizenship. In this large building complex, von der Heydt hosted an illustrious assortment of guests, the aristocracy of art, literature, music, theatre and dance. The houses were decorated with objects from his collection, over again juxtaposing pieces from different regions of the world. He entrusted other parts of his extensive drove as long-term loans to various museums in Europe and the US, or had them exhibited in several shows. Betwixt 1932 and 1941, the Arts and Crafts Museum of Zurich (Kunstgewerbemuseum) mounted a number of exhibitions on Indian, African, Oceanic and East Asian fine art, some of them drawing primarily on the collection of von der Heydt. This strengthened the ties betwixt the collector and the Urban center of Zurich, resulting in his conclusion to donate his collection of non-European art to the City of Zurich, while his European works of art went to the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal. The nearly 1600 objects are withal the main pillar of the Museum Rietberg's nowadays collection.
The history of the museum's collection
Since the founding of the museum, the collection has grown substantially thanks to large-scale donations of of import collections, as well as generous gifts and fiscal support from individual and corporate sponsors.
At the fourth dimension of the opening of the Museum Rietberg, the Chinese section only housed the von der Heydt collection, with its high-quality sculptures (3). The J.F.H. Menten Collection of more than 120 pieces of Chinese tomb figures and bronzes, which had been on loan to the Arts and Crafts Museum of Zurich since 1948, was so purchased and transferred to the new museum. In the 1960s and 1970s, the museum received the collections of the Rücker-Embden family of thirty-two ceramics, as well as Chinese paintings, bronzes and jades from the collection of Gret Hasler. A big and of import group of 213 jade objects, including a great variety of finely carved pieces from the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties, entered the museum in 1960. These were nerveless by Reinhard J.C. Hoeppli (1893–1973), the Swiss doctor and zoologist, who was Professor of Parasitology at a Medical College in Beijing from 1929 to 1942 and once more from 1948 to 1952. Moreover, Hoeppli collected snuff bottles at a fourth dimension when there was very little connoisseurship in this field. He was able to assemble a small, but exquisite, grouping, manufactured either as gifts for the royal court or in the palace workshops.ii
In the field of Chinese painting, the museum is greatly obliged to Charles A. Drenowatz (1908–1979), who donated his outstanding collection of more than 300 paintings in 1979 (see the article by Kim Karlsson in this effect). Drenowatz never went to East Asia, but assembled his collection during the 1950s and 1960s by buying from renowned dealers in Europe. He was especially interested in the literati paintings from the late Ming and the early Qing dynasty, but likewise collected ink paintings from the first one-half of the 20th century.3 Thanks to his souvenir, the museum at present boasts several masterpieces, such as Gong Xian'south (circa 1617–1689) A Thousand Peaks and a Myriad of Ravines, Mei Qing's (1623–1697) album, Magnificent Views of Xuancheng, too as infrequent works by Fu Baoshi, Huang Binghong and Li Keran. A selection of these paintings is ever on evidence in the Chinese galleries, rotating every four months.
In 1986, the museum received the generous heritance of 40-three archaic Chinese bronzes from Ernst Winkler (1902–1985), who collected primarily in Hong Kong during his time equally a businessman in Asia. The precious collection holds fantabulous bronze ritual vessels from the Shang ( circa 1600–1100 BC) and Zhou (circa 1100–256 BC) dynasties (4). Some outstanding artworks of China's Bronze Age came to the museum cheers to the generosity of Pierre Uldry and his wife, Alice. Between 1979 and 2000, he purchased 5 infrequent pieces for the museum, including a giant early Zhou ding tripod and an impressive Shang nao bell. Pierre Uldry was not merely an enthusiastic supporter of the museum, but also a passionate collector. He started ownership Chinese cloisonné before the quality of this fine art course was widely appreciated, and was able to gather a unique collection of early pieces of the highest quality (5), including a large imperial dragon jar bearing a Xuande (1426–1435) marking, widely considered the most important early on cloisonné object (along with its respective piece in the British Museum).four Part of this important collection is on long-term loan in the Museum Rietberg.
At the start of 2012, the Chinese section gratefully received its most dramatic augmentation when the Meiyintang Foundation placed 650 works of Chinese ceramics, dating from the Neolithic period (circa 6500–1600 BC) to the Song dynasty (960–1279), on permanent loan in the museum (6). Beginning in 1994, the renowned Meiyintang Collection of Chinese ceramics and porcelain assembled by two brothers over a flow of five decades, was shown in several exhibitions and published in successive volumes. In 2003, Gilbert Zuellig, the collector of the earlier works up to the Song dynasty, decided to transfer the majority of his collection to a foundation with the purpose of preserving it as an ensemble and making it accessible to the public. For the last seven years, these artworks have enriched the China galleries of the Museum Rietberg, turning the museum into a Mecca for ceramic lovers (7).5
The Japanese holdings (eight) too have their roots in the drove of Eduard von der Heydt (9), who acquired his first Chinese and Japanese artefacts from the estate of Raphael Petrucci (1872–1917), the Franco-Belgian Sinologist. Although not an adept in Japanese art, von der Heydt relied on the fact that the collection was of loftier quality due to its provenance. Yet, except for a few good Buddhist paintings, the 109 Japanese objects, that include sculptures, tea wares and secular paintings, are of lesser artistic importance. The first major enhancement of the drove came in 1957 in the form of the donation of over 700 woodblock prints and books by Willy Boller (1883–1959), who started collecting Japanese prints when he was a pupil in Paris in the 1920s. He never went to Japan, but forged his connoisseurship in Japanese woodblock prints from contemporary publications in English language and French. Starting in the late 1920s, he likewise organised exhibitions of Japanese prints in Zurich. The quality of his collection is mixed, only is considered a valuable source for the understanding of the state of knowledge of, and connoisseurship in, Japanese woodblock prints in Switzerland in the showtime half of the 20th century.
The next significant donations of Japanese fine art to the Museum Rietberg came in the early 1960s from Julius Mueller (1886–1970). An employee of Volkart Brothers, the international trading company based in Winterthur, Mueller first worked at the company'due south branch in Republic of india before beingness dispatched to Japan in 1914. During the First World State of war, Mueller remained in Nippon, formed a family unit with a Japanese woman and immersed himself in the study of Japanese linguistic communication, civilisation and the arts. Afterward his retirement, he returned permanently to Switzerland where he engaged in the promotion of cultural exchange between the two countries. Mueller used his abundant financial ways to assemble a discerning collection of Japanese fine art comprising Haniwa figures, Buddhist paintings and sculptures, Edo period (1603–1868) paintings and woodblock prints of the early masters. Many of the museum'south highlights belong to the group of 246 works that he donated in diverse installments betwixt 1962 and 1965.
Mueller collected mainly in Nihon, where he was assisted by Heinz Brasch (1905–1995), his colleague and shut friend. Brasch was born in Nippon, the son of a German professor and a Japanese woman. He gained his familiarity with woodblock prints and later on paintings through his father, who was a passionate collector of prints. Through his employment at Volkart Brothers, Brasch built upwardly a strong connection to Switzerland and finally settled in Zurich with his family after the Second Globe State of war. He became a close friend with Elsy Leuzinger (1910–2010), the 2d manager of the Museum Rietberg, and consulted her in organising an exhibition of Japanese prints and paintings, for which he wrote the catalogues. Brasch also published widely on Kyoto, his hometown, every bit well equally on Nanga and Haiga, the first such studies in German language. There are 163 of his paintings and woodblock printed books in the museum'south drove.6
The highlight of the Japanese collection is undoubtedly the group of thirty-four outstanding Nō masks, donated to the museum in 1991 by Balthasar and Nanni Reinhart (10). The collection was assembled by Balthasar'southward father, Georg Reinhart, who hailed from the renowned industrialist and art collector Reinhart family of Winterthur. The masks once belonged to the Toyama branch of the Maeda clan, feudal lords of Kaga province (present-day Kanazawa Prefecture) and great patrons of the Nō theatre. They were brought to Europe in the early 1900s and Reinhart bought them through the introduction past Ernst Grosse (1862–1927), i of the pioneers of East Asian art history in Germany and a close acquaintance of Hayashi Tadamasa, the famous Japanese fine art dealer.7
Over fourth dimension, the Japanese holdings grew steadily through gifts, bequests, acquisitions and permanent loans. Nigh noteworthy among the permanent loans is the extraordinary drove of over 300 kyōka-surimono, collected by the Swiss-based, Italian artist, Marino Lusy (1880–1954). This collection, which includes a substantial number of rare and exquisite pieces, was donated to the Museum of Pattern Zurich and transferred on permanent loan to the Museum Rietberg in 2005 (11).8 Another remarkable collection of about 250 surimono, focusing on the less known genre of the Shijo schoolhouse, entered the museum'southward drove in 2018 as a gift of Gisela Müller and Erich Gross. Japanese religious art, Nō masks and costumes, as well as paintings and prints, are shown in regular rotations in 2 dedicated galleries of the museum.
Himalayan and Tibetan art became a major focal betoken of the museum, with the permanent placement of around 200 bronze sculptures by the Berti Aschmann Foundation in 1995 and 2004. Berti Aschmann (1917–2005), the Zurich collector, assembled this magnificent group of sculptures over a flow of forty years. The drove provides a comprehensive survey of the development of Buddhist bronzes in Republic of india, Nepal and Tibet, beginning with pieces from the Swat valley dated to the 7th century, from Kashmir (12) and India's Pala dynasty, to the classical mode of Tibet. A group of fourteen exquisite examples of the Tibeto-Chinese bronzes, manufactured in the regal workshops in China, is quite outstanding (run into the article by Christian Boehm in this result). Aschmann paid particular attention to the charisma and beauty of the statues equally expressed past their faces. One specialty of her drove is the emphasis on statues of female deities (13), comprising no fewer than thirty-four private works.9
The fine collection of Indian sculptures from von der Heydt (fourteen) was enlarged in 1971, when the Alice Boner Collection was donated to the museum (15) and the permission of the Indian Archaeological Survey was obtained to transport the pieces from the collector's habitation in Varanasi to Zurich. Alice Blooper (1889–1981), the Swiss creative person, settled in Varanasi in 1936, where she continued her work every bit a sculptor, simply also studied Indian fine art and painting. Her seminal fine art historical work, too as her engagement in propagating Indian music and trip the light fantastic toe, made her an important cultural mediator. Today, the Museum Rietberg houses most of her collection of Indian sculpture and approximately 650 Indian miniature paintings (16), likewise every bit her personal and artistic annal, including sculptural works, drawings, paintings, correspondence, scientific writings and more than 30,000 photographs. Her legacy was the subject of a research project, resulting in an exhibition dedicated to her life and piece of work, presented in Bombay (Mumbai), New Delhi and Zurich.x
The gift of the Alice Blooper Collection of Indian pigmentings laid the foundation for one of the major focal points of the Museum Rietberg. Due to the delivery of Eberhard Fischer, the third manager of the museum, the collection has grown steadily in size and importance. Several donations of larger collections, every bit well as private purchases and gifts by a number of supporters, have ensured that the Indian painting department has 1 of the most important holdings of Indian paintings worldwide. In 2001, the museum received approximately 250 paintings from Horst Metzger,xi the High german collector, while Danielle Porret has donated twoscore-four examples over the final nine years. Cheers to generous sponsors, the museum has also been able to make a large number of complementary acquisitions in the fine art market (17), so that the Indian painting collection now totals more than 1800. These are presented in three exhibitions each twelvemonth in a defended exhibition infinite in the Parkvilla Rieter.
Over the final twelve years, the Indian department has opened to new fields of art. In 2009, information technology received a large collection of some 1500 pieces of Indian textiles, collected mainly in Gujarat in the mid-20th century by Eberhard Fischer. The objects permit an overview of textile production in traditional India and show a keen variety of the techniques and the inventiveness of weavers, dyers, painters, printers and embroiderers.
The sculptural art of the Adavasi people, the tribal societies of Bharat, are now well presented through three big donations and acquisitions (run across the article by Johannes Beltz in this issue): some 350 tribal bronzes from Due south Republic of india from the collection of Heidi and Hans Kaufmann in Vienna; approximately 60 tribal bronzes from Key Bharat donated by Jean-Pierre and Dorothea Zehnder; and a group of ninety-ii sculptured string instruments collected by Bengt Fosshag.
The rather small collection of Southeast Asian art in the Museum Rietberg, near of which comprises sculptural works from the donation of von der Heydt, contains some very fine Khmer and Champa sculptures (eighteen).12 The bestowment of the collection of Toni Gerber, the Swiss gallerist, in 2002, led the museum to explore new fields of artistic creation. The large holdings of small, but interesting, objects consist of three groups: 600 votive plaques of fired or air-stale dirt, dating from the 10th to the 19th century, from Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand; nearly 400 small metal figurines, mostly showing scenes from the life of the Buddha Shakyamuni, made for votive stupas in Burma in the late 19th and the early on 20th century; and around 350 ceramic vessels from a wide surface area in Southeast Asia. In 2006, the museum as well received forty-five Javanese Wayang kulit shadow play figures, dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, from Paul Stohler.
Eduard von der Heydt, the founding donor of the museum, never collected art from the Virtually and Middle E, with the exception of several carpets. Two more donations of carpets from Robert Akeret in 1959, and Erwin and Hilde Luck in 1988, have formed a grouping of some 160 carpets from Persia (Iran), Turkey, the Caucasus, Eastern Turkestan and Arab republic of egypt. Recently, an outstandingly well-preserved collection of Persian garments, embroideries and printed fabrics, nerveless by Emil Alpiger in the belatedly 19th century in Persia, entered the museum'south collection.
Objects from the area now constituting modern Iran now stand for the focus of the fine art collection of the Department of the Nearly and Eye Eastward. Rudolph Schmidt, the famous fine art collector, gave a collection of some 200 ancient statuary objects from Luristan, dating from 3000 to 1000 BC, to the museum in 1971. Information technology includes some of the oldest pieces in the museum's holdings. Ceramics, manuscripts, and some newly acquired excellent examples of lacquer objects from the 18th century Qajar catamenia complete the collection.
One of the Museum Rietberg's strengths is its high-quality collection of sculptural arts from Africa. Equally early equally the 1920s, von der Heydt realised the high artistic quality of the wood sculptures from Western and Central Africa and started collecting these items for their aesthetic value. He was securely impressed by the manifestation of the thought of the noble man being in these artworks. More 300 sculptures had entered the museum past 1952 (19) and another fifty-7 works, collected past Han Coray (1880–1974), the Swiss gallerist, between 1919 and 1928, were transferred to the Museum Rietberg from the Museum of Design in Zurich. The Department of Africa has since grown through purchases and donations (twenty). More than 750 objects, collected and documented by Hans Himmelheber (1908–2003), the art ethnologist, accept been brought together in the museum'due south collection, the bulk of donations from Barbara and Eberhard Fischer and members of the Himmelheber family. The groundbreaking research past Himmelheber on the identification of private artists in different regions in Africa is held in high esteem at the Museum Rietberg. Several exhibitions, focusing on different ethnic groups or regions, have explored the individual paw of the artist.
Von der Heydt collected the arts of the Americas to a lesser degree. However, afterwards the founding of the museum, Elsy Leuzinger actively started to larn objects of Mesoamerica and Southward America. Today, the museum boasts an exquisite collection of art from the Northwest Coast, Mexico and Peru. Several big exhibitions accept highlighted art from the Americas, especially from unlike cultural periods of United mexican states and Peru. These have led to a fruitful co-operation between the museum and archaeologists and specialists worldwide.
Oceanic art is represented in the Museum Rietberg by a fine group of objects that von der Heydt bought in the 1920s and 1930s, including pieces of extraordinary quality. The most "exotic" field in the museum is a local ane, comprising a group of 162 Swiss masks worn during carnival and other traditional seasonal festivals in the mount valleys. The collection was assembled almost entirely past von der Heydt and is the nigh comprehensive collection of Swiss carnival masks in Switzerland.
A newly established department in the museum is dedicated to photography. The collection includes works by renowned photographers from Africa, Asia and Europe, as well as field photography and historical images of items in the museum'south collection. The photographic archive of scholars and researchers closely linked to the museum—Alice Boner, Hans Himmelheber and Elsy Leuzinger—constitute an important function of this collection.
In improver to viii curators attention to the different regional departments, the museum instituted a position for provenance research more than than ten years ago. The offset results of the research have led to a major exhibition in 2013 on Eduard von der Heydt, his life and drove policy.xiii Other temporary exhibitions, displayed in the bounds of the permanent collection, introduced different facets of provenance research. In 2013, a show focused on Alfred Flechtheim (1878–1937), the fine art dealer, and his ties to the museum's collection of Oceanic art. The exhibition, "The Question of Provenance", in 2019 discussed a multifariousness of thematic fields that arise from provenance research. All information from the provenance research are included in the online information banking concern and can be consulted past museum visitors.
Exhibition activity
Since 1972, the museum has regularly organised special exhibitions, starting in off-site exhibition spaces spread across the metropolis of Zurich. In 1985, the museum was able to build a 2-storey underground exhibition space of 1100 square metres, allowing larger exhibitions to take place on its bounds. A new large extension opened to the public in 2007, increasing the exhibition space by 125 per cent. The spacious halls, equipped with the latest engineering science and providing the best conditions for the artworks, impress with their clarity and restrained elegance. The architects, Adolf Krischanitz (Vienna) and Alfred Grazioli (Berlin), constructed the underground building, thus leaving the exterior of the villa and the park unaltered. Visitors enter the building through a drinking glass pavilion and proceed into the foyer with its distinctive agate ceiling and a work by the contemporary artist, Helmut Federle. From here, they descend to the two underground levels, each comprising 1300 square metres and connecting the archway with the historic Villa Wesendonck. The upper level houses the collection of East Asian and African fine art, besides as a gallery for temporary exhibitions. The lower level provides a big open up plan space. This construction enables every special exhibition to be presented with a new interior design, imbuing each testify with an individual expect and ambiance.
The extension has also allowed for an open storage display. The bigger part of the museum collection, excluding lite sensitive objects on paper or textiles, is visible to the public during regular opening hours. This enables visitors and specialists alike to contemplate and study the holdings of the museum at all times. Along with open admission to the online drove—albeit still a work in progress—the open storage is role of the museum's policy of transparency. In the new exhibition rooms, the museum organises temporary shows on a regular basis of two to iii large and three smaller exhibitions per year. Additionally, Indian painting is displayed in iii thematic shows each year, drawing mainly from the museum's ain holdings, but as well including loans from public or private collections.
Since the 1980s, the museum has co-operated with functionner institutions worldwide, including the following early exhibitions: in 1986, "Dian—A Vanished Kingdom in China" with archaeological finds from Yunnan province, later travelling to museums in Cologne, Vienna, Berlin, Stuttgart and Rome; in 1989, the Oxus culture in cooperation with the Academy of Science in Tajikistan and the Hermitage in Leningrad; and in 1993, Helmut Brinker, Professor for East Asian Art History at the University of Zurich, curated the groundbreaking exhibition, "Zen—Masters of Meditation in Images and Writings", in co-operation with the Kyoto National Museum and the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan.
The Museum Rietberg has also been the partner to a number of important international exhibitions, such as "Buddha'due south Paradise—Treasures from Aboriginal Gandhara, Pakistan" in 2009, and "Osiris—Egypt's Sunken Mysteries" in 2017, the latter drawing more than 100,000 visitors. We have too organised a number of shows, that were passed on to other partner museums, such as: "Wonders of the Age: Principal Painters of India, 1100–1900" (2011) and "Eccentric Visions: The Worlds of Luo Ping" (2010) to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; "African Masters" (2014) to Bonn, Amsterdam and Paris; and "Render of the Buddha: The Qingzhou Discoveries" (2002) to Berlin and the Royal Academy in London.
It has always been an ambition of the Museum Rietberg to present individual artists and their works. Two landmark exhibitions were "Master Painter of Bharat" in 2011, presenting the almost important Indian painters and their best works in one evidence, and "African Masters" in 2014, working out the private hands and styles of nifty sculptors from different generations and parts of West Africa. The museum has ventured to present several monographic shows on traditional Asian artists—each of them for the beginning time in the West. In 1997, an exhibition focused on the innovative 8th century Indian painter, Nainsukh of Guler. The famous 16th century Japanese creative person, Hasegawa Tōhaku, made a lasting impression on the museum'south visitors in a great show in 2001, including his masterpiece, Pino Forests, which is often considered to exist the near important painting in Japan's art history. Another major exhibition dedicated to a single Japanese creative person took place in 2018. "Rosetsu—Ferocious Brush" presented for the first time ever the entire set of sliding doors that the creative person painted in 1786 for the Zen temple Muryōji in Southern Wakayama Prefecture. In 2009, the museum staged the beginning monographic bear witness worldbroad on the eccentric 18th century Chinese painter, Luo Ping, presenting some of his masterpieces from Chinese, Japanese and Western museums, that had never been publicly shown before.
A hallmark of the Museum Rietberg is the holding of cantankerous-cultural exhibitions, exploring one specific topic in different societies across the globe. Adult every bit a articulation curatorial effort, the museum presented "Oracle—A Glimpse into the Future" (2000), "The Art of Love—Pleasure and Suffering for Love in World Art" (2003), "Mysticism" (2012), "Mysteries of the Cosmos" (2014) and "Garden Cultures" (2016). This spring and summer, the museum will narrate the cultural and relevant history and symbolism of the mirror (2019).
In its broad spectrum of special exhibitions, the Museum Rietberg has addressed archaeological topics, such as the Peruvian cultures of Chavin (2012) and Nasca (2018); told stories of early global exchange and trade, such as the production of ivory carving in Sri Lanka for the Portuguese courtroom in the 16th century (2010); the mutual cultural appropriations between Persia and Europe in the 17th century (2013); and presented wide-ranging themes in a didactic way, such every bit in the show on Buddhism in 2019.
Raising awareness of diverse cultures and ways of thinking, besides equally of the interconnectedness of global societies, is an important outcome in the work of the museum. Alongside the exhibition programme, the museum offers a wider range of activities, including 300 to 400 workshops a twelvemonth catering to master and secondary school students, fostering inclusiveness for visitors of all ages and social background. More than 1000 public and private guided tours per annum introduce visitors to in-depth content. On Sundays, the open atelier invites the young and erstwhile alike to experiment with artistic techniques. A Japanese tea master regularly hosts tea ceremonies in an accurate tea room, while concerts presenting historic Indian singers and solo musicians are organised periodically. Attracting 100,000 visitors a year, the Museum Rietberg is a flagship institution showcasing Zurich's cultural engagement and diversity.
1 Axel Langer and Chris Waldon, Minne, Muse und Mäzen: Otto und Mathilde Wesendonck und ihr Zürcher Künstlerzirkel, Zurich: Museum Rietberg, 2002.
2 Robert Hall, Chinese Snuff Bottles, Masterpieces from the Museum Rietberg Zurich, Zurich: Museum Rietberg, 1993.
three Chu-Tsing Li, A G Peaks and a Myriad Ravines: Chinese Painting in the Charles A. Drenowatz:. Drove, Ascone: Artibus Asiae, 1974; and Chu-Tsing Li, Trends in Modem Chinese Painting, Ascone: Artbus Asiae, 1979.
four Helmut Brinker and Albert Lutz, Chinese Cloisonné: The Pierre Uldry Drove, New York: The Asia Guild Galleries, 1989.
5 Alexandra von Przychowski, Chinese Ceramics: The Meiyintang Collection in the Museum Rietberg, Zurich: Museum Rietberg, 2018.
6 Nara Prefectural Museum of Fine art, Masterpieces of Ukiyoe from the Rietberg Museum Zurich, Nara: Nara Prefectural Museum or Art, 1993.
seven Brigitte Bernegger, No-Masken in Museum Rietberg: Die Schenkung Balthasar und Nanni Reinhart, Zurich: Museum Rietberg, 1993.
8 John T. Carpenter, Reading Surimono (with a catalogue or the Marino Lusy Collection), Zurich: Museum Rietberg, 2008.
9 Helmut Uhlig, On the Path to Enlightenment, Zurich: Museum Rietberg, 1995; and Heidi von Schroedcr-lmhor, Schritte zur Erkenntnis, Zurich: Museum Rietberg, 2006.
10 Andrea Kuratli and Johannes Beltz, eds, Alice Boner: A Visionary Artist and Scholar across ii Continents, New Delhi: Roli Books, 2004.
11 B.Due north. Goswamy and Eberhard Fischer, The Horst Metzger Collection in the Museum Rietberg, New Delhi: Kiyogi Books, 2018.
12 See Jan Fontcin, The Art of Southeast Asia: The Collection of the Museum Rietberg, Zurich: Museum Rietberg, 2007.
13 Eberhard Illner, ed., Eduard von der Heydt: Kunstsammler; Bankier, Mäzen, Munich: Prestel, 2013.
Source: https://artsofasia.com/2022/04/10/the-museum-rietberg-history-collection-and-activities/
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