The Museum of Fine Arts Bern (German: ''Kunstmuseum Bern''), established in 1879 in

Bern german: Berner(in)french: Bernois(e) it, bernese , neighboring_municipalities = Bremgarten bei Bern, Frauenkappelen, Ittigen, Kirchlindach, Köniz, Mühleberg, Muri bei Bern, Neuenegg, Ostermundigen, Wohlen bei Bern, Zollikofen , website ...

, is the museum of fine arts of the de facto capital of Switzerland. Its holdings run from the Middle Ages to the present. It houses works by

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented ...

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

, Edmond Jean de Pury, Ferdinand Hodler,

Méret Oppenheim Meret (or Méret) Elisabeth Oppenheim (6 October 1913 – 15 November 1985) was a German-born Swiss Surrealist artist and photographer. Early life Meret Oppenheim was born on 6 October 1913 in Berlin. She was named after Meretlein, a wild c ...

, Ricco Wassmer and

Adolf Wölfli Adolf Wölfli (February 29, 1864 – November 6, 1930) (occasionally spelled Adolf Woelfli or Adolf Wolfli) was a Swiss artist who was one of the first artists to be associated with the Art Brut or outsider art label. Early life Wölfli was born ...

. The collection consists of over 3,000 paintings and sculptures as well as 48,000 drawings, prints, photographs, videos and films. In May 2014, the museum was named sole heir in the will of Cornelius Gurlitt, the German collector associated with the 2012 Munich artworks discovery. The authorities had found over 1,400 artworks, many of them suspected to be stolen from European Jews by the Nazis, in Gurlitt's homes in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...

and

Salzburg Salzburg (, ; literally "Salt-Castle"; bar, Soizbuag, label=Austro-Bavarian) is the fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020, it had a population of 156,872. The town is on the site of the Roman settlement of ''Iuvavum''. Salzburg was founded ...

. The museum was given six months to decide whether it would accept the bequest and its terms. The most important provision required that the museum conduct research into the

provenance Provenance (from the French ''provenir'', 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art but is now used in similar senses i ...

of the paintings and make restitution where needed to the heirs of the original owners. The museum director, Matthias Frehner, pledged that it would do so if it accepted the bequest. The German government quietly urged the museum to accept the collection in order to provide a neutral place where research into its history could continue. (There was concern that if the collection were dispersed among Gurlitt's distant relatives, there would be no guarantee that they would conduct the research properly.) Determining whether or not to accept required much deliberation on the part of the museum board, work by its legal team, and significant fundraising from Swiss donors, so that the museum would not be reliant on German funding that could taint the neutrality of the provenance research. In November 2014 the board voted to accept the collection. In August 2018, an episode of '' Fake or Fortune'' featured the director of the museum Dr.

Nina Zimmer Nina Zimmer (born 1973) is a German art historian who is director of the Zentrum Paul Klee and the Museum of Fine Arts Bern. Early life Zimmer was born in 1973. She studied art history, Romance languages and media studies in Bordeaux, Göttinge ...

asking the team to investigate what appears to be the sole British piece of art in the Gurlitt collection.

References

External links

Official Museum of Fine Arts Bern website
— ''info on history + collections''.
Credit-suisse.com: Interview with the Director of Bern Museum of Fine Arts
{{Authority control Art museums and galleries in Switzerland Museums in Bern Art museums established in 1879 1879 establishments in Switzerland Neoclassical architecture in Switzerland