Fondation Beyeler, Basel: How To Reach, Best Time & Tips

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Fondation Beyeler Overview

A sought-after museum in the medieval city of Basel, Fondation Beyeler was commissioned by Hildy and Ernst Beyeler, the celebrated swiss art dealers of the modern century. Fondation Beyeler boastfully accommodates the 250-odd pictorial icons of classic modernism of the 20th-century.

Alongside the exquisite demonstration of the tribal culture of Alaska, Oceania, and Africa, these masterpieces, featured in Switzerland trip packages, adequately reflect the conventional features of the era: from Cézanne, van Gogh and Monet to Picasso, Lichtenstein, Warhol and Bacon.

Peacefully positioned in the heart of Brower Park along with its green trees and water-lily pond, the construction of Fondation Beyeler is elegantly compounded into an extravagant medley of art and nature. The surrounding landscape of the museum is enhanced by the scenes of cornfields, vineyards, and the unparalleled views of the Black Forest foothills.

Exclusively designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, this excellent private-turned-public exhibition site is built in long-drawn open-plan building design. Porphyry- a volcanic rock, was specially imported from Patagonia to build the museum walls that harmonises the aesthetic landscape around.

The exterior is further magnified with the decoration of stone seats on the front terraced yard from where visitors can have a glimpse of the artwork in the gallery from outside. The idea of filling the central gallery with natural light led to the use of a crystalline glass roof that flawlessly contrasts with the granite walls.

The frosted glass panels capture the sunlight on the North and obstruct on the East and West to offset the casting of shadows in the artwork collections while forming a cheerful ambience in the room.

How To Reach

Basel Airport (BSL):
From Basel Airport (BSL), the fastest way to reach Fondation Beyeler is to take Towncar or Uber and the journey nearly takes 13-15 minutes. On the other hand, the cheapest alternative is to take the bus from Basel to Brausebad and then take the tram from Brausebad to Riehen, Fondation Beyeler. The total duration takes approximately less than 1 hour.

Zurich Airport (ZRH):

The most direct route to reach Fondation Beyeler from Zurich Airport is Zürich Flughafen-Basel SBB railroad and then the Basel-Heuwaage-Riehen tram line. The approximate duration is 2h 11m.

Best Time To Visit

The museum is accessible throughout the year. However, the summer from May to September is the best season to visit Fondation Beyeler in Basel. This time the temperature fluctuates within 10 degrees to 25 degrees and the sky remains blue.

Although the visiting hours of the museum are up to the evening, but the most perfect time to visit Fondation Beyeler is the day time as the museum gets charged with scintillating rays of direct sunlight that generates a sparkling ambience within the gallery and highlights the artworks under a natural spotlight that truly gives ultimate pleasure to the visitors' eyes.

The peak-time of visiting the museum is from 10 am to 12 pm. The whole tour of the museum takes around 2 hours.

Other Essential Information

Location:

The mecca of art enthusiasts, Fondation Beyeler is situated in the heart of Riehen, near Basel. The location of the museum is Brower Park that is encompassed by verdant greenery of nature.

Address:
101 Baselstrasse, Basel- 4125, Switzerland

Visiting Hours:

- Everyday: From 10 am to 6 pm.

- Wednesdays: From 10 am To 8 pm

Admission charges:

- For Adults: 25 Swiss francs/Euro

- Children and young people up to age 25: Free Admission

- Students from Schule Kunst und Gestaltung Basel and Kunsthistorisches Seminar Basel: Free Admission

- University students aged 26 - 30: 12 Swiss francs/Euro

- Visitors with disabilities: 16 Swiss francs/Euro

History of Fondation Beyeler

Europe's pre-eminent dealer in twentieth-century art, Ernst Beyeler (16 July 1921 – 25 February 2010) along with his wife Hilda Kunz (1922 - 18 July 2008) started to speculate about the future of his artwork collection. Mr Beyeler preferred the concept of assembling the collections of artworks by renowned artists of the preceding century with arts from Africa and Oceania in an appropriate reservation– a Gallery museum.

Mr Beyeler was genuinely touched by the architectural brilliance of Renzo Piano who had outlined the construction of the Menil Collection in Houston and Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 1982, Mr Beyeler commissioned the Italian leading architect to design Fondation Beyeler, a gallery to accommodate their special artwork collection.

In 1989, the first public exhibition art collection of Fondation Beyeler took place at the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid and was afterwards displayed at Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin in 1993. Beyeler Foundation passed its collection forever open to the public from 1997 after the completion of the building structure in its entirety.

After the official inauguration, the first exhibition took place in the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. The gallery is accurately funded with annual grants received from the commune of Riehen, Basel County and the cantons of Basel City.

An additional contribution is counted from authoritative partners such as Swiss bank UBS, Bayer AG, and Novartis. In 2006, roughly about 340,000 people attended the foundation and in 2016, the total guest number was 332,000.

Collections in Fondation Beyeler

Ernst and Hildy Beyeler devotedly assigned themselves towards the collection of arts throughout their careers. They secured all the portraits and sculptures of various renowned artists namely Claude Monet, Richard Serra, Henri Rousseau, Félix González, Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Alexander Calder, Henri Matisse, Constantin Brancusi, Mark Rothko and others at their globally renowned art collection, Fondation Beyeler.

Being an open and vigorous museum, Fondation Beyeler grasps thematic exhibitions on various places and art movements that performed an essential role in the progression of modernism. Every year the art museum further collaborates with modern artists on designs inside the gallery and outdoors in communal reservations.

The Beyeler Collection is rehung through diverse exhibitions in a year and therefore its constellations keep uniformly increasing. Now, the collection is raised more than 400 artworks containing an amazing masterpiece compilation of 200 Post-Impressionism, Classical Modernism and contemporary drawing, collectively with 20 models of ethnographic sculpture from Africa, Oceania and Alaska.

About the Art Mediation at Fondation Beyeler

The Fondation Beyeler's chief intention is to unite art and spectator under a single roof. The museum conducts guided tours and various workshops not only to share information and facts about artists, pictures, and periods but also to yield deep research and exchange of offbeat opinions, judgments, insights, and sentiments.

The exclusive goal is to connect the artwork with the viewer, especially with children and young spirits who discover their way to such classical tales depicted through the precious artworks. Through executing the guided tours, Fondation Beyeler strives to make art accessible through many approaches and to let the spectators examine the unexplored and earn supplementary prospects.

The workshop for adults affords the chance for dynamic hands-on immersion into what was witnessed and felt throughout the tour of the exhibition. A special guided trip of the museum is also arranged to allow guests, communities, tour crowds or separate parties to have an independent art experience.

Fondation Beyeler is completely accessible to wheelchair candidates and physically challenged people. For handicapped people, a comprehensive range of escorted tours and workshops is also available. Visitors with hearing disability will be attained by special supervised tours attended by a symbol language translator, and special tour guidance(detailed image descriptions) is also available for the blind and visually impaired.

The museum assistance also provides exclusive tours and workshops for patients with mental disabilities.

Traveller's Tips for visiting Fondation Beyeler

- Visitors under 25 are required to show their ID proof at the ticket office.

- University Students are also asked to show their University ID at the time of entry.

- Guests with physical disability are requested to present their medical ID at the office counter before the access.

- Companies who come to visit the museum must have 20 or more people in a group.

- During Mondays and Wednesdays, the entry fees for adults are reduced by 5 Swiss francs/Euro (20 Swiss francs/Euro per head), group entry fees by 4 Swiss francs/Euro (16 Swiss francs/Euro per head) and University students entry fees by 2 Swiss francs/Euro (10 Swiss francs/Euro per head).