Fondation Beyeler: Switzerland's most-visited art museum and its Renzo Piano architecture

The Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, near Basel, is Switzerland's most-visited art museum, housing over 400 masterpieces of 20th- and 21st-century art. Founded by Ernst and Hildy Beyeler in 1997, the collection spans from Post-Impressionism to Pop Art, including works by Monet, van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, Klee, Giacometti, Rothko, Bacon, Fontana, Richter, Serra, Dumas, and Tillmans, as well as ethnographic art from Africa, Alaska, and Oceania. The museum building, designed by Renzo Piano and completed in 1997, features a linear plan with four reinforced concrete axes clad in red porphyry from Patagonia, a complex roof system for zenithal light, and generous glass surfaces connecting interior and exterior. An expansion designed by Peter Zumthor, announced in May 2017, will add three new volumes in the adjacent Iselin-Weber park. Current exhibitions include a Picasso show curated by Raphaël Bouvier focusing on the Blue and Rose periods (75 works), followed by a Rudolf Stingel retrospective developed with Udo Kittelmann of the Nationalgalerie Berlin. The museum is accessible via tram line 6 from Basel's old town, crossing the Rhine on the Mittlere Brücke, and is set within the Berower Park, an English garden surrounded by vineyards and wheat fields.