page_title: Museums in Basel
section_title: Democratization, popularization
hierarchical_section_title: Museums in Basel / Museum promotion and museum policy / Democratization, popularization
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Historisches Museum Basel in der Barfüsserkirche. Blick von der Chorempore in Richtung Eingang, links historische Brunnenstöcke, rechts Museumsshop und Kasse sowie Cafeteria.
context_page_description: The Basel museums encompass a series of museums in the city of Basel, Switzerland, and the neighboring region. They represent a broad spectrum of collections with a marked concentration in the fine arts and house numerous holdings of international significance. With at least three dozen institutions, not including the local history collections in the surrounding communities, the region offers an extraordinarily high density of museums compared to other metropolitan areas of similar size. They draw some one and a half million visitors annually.
  Constituting an essential and defining component of Basel culture and cultural policy, the museums are the result of closely interwoven private and public collecting activities and promotion of arts and culture going back to the 16th century. The public museums of the canton of Basel-City arose from the 1661 purchase of the private Amerbach Cabinet by the city and the University of Basel and thus represent the oldest civic museum collection in continuous existence. Since the 1980s, a number of collections have been made public in new purpose-built structures that have achieved renown as acclaimed examples of avant-garde museum architecture.
context_section_description: Despite the affirmation by voters, traditional museums found themselves in a prolonged crisis beginning in the late 1960s. Not limited to Basel, this crisis originated in the profound sociopolitical reevaluation of culture of the era. The acquisitions of the State Art Credit and the 1967 Christmas exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel set off fierce protests among the loosely organized association of rejected artists, which became known as the Farnsburg Group (Farnsburgergruppe). Even the cantonal parliament got involved in addressing the concerns. The events raised the question of whether Basel was “just a museum city” – here meant in a derogatory sense – and prompted a broadly cast debate over the fostering of young artists and the functioning of the museums. The establishment of the Klingental Exhibition Gallery (Ausstellungsraum Klingental) several years later was a direct consequence of the shortcomings that had been identified.
  The democratization that took hold in the 1960s meant doing away with the elite in favor of the egalitarian, dispelling fears of the new and unknown. With a focus on the constructivist  works of the 1960s associated with the “New Tendencies” (Nouvelles Tendances) movement, the short-lived Progressive Museum (1968–1974) set out to “establish a modern collection that would be accessible to the public from the very beginning” and wanted to avoid any sort of “secularized ceremony”. The expansion of education and communication, likewise a mandate stemming from this era, could only be achieved through an increase in funding. Since the mid-1970s, however, increasingly tight budgets and persistent financial difficulties in the public sector have exerted a palpable impact on museums. The museum studies program at the University of Basel could only be offered from 1992 to 1994 due to funding shortages. In the mid-1990s, a government resolution cut the budget of the state museums by ten percent, leading to the 1996 closure of two museums, the Museum of Design (Museum für Gestaltung) and the City and Cathedral Museum (Stadt- und Münstermuseum). The ensuing debate and the pressure from a public referendum in support of the city's museums led to the adoption of the Basel-City Museums Act (Museumsgesetz) of 1999, which placed the holdings of the remaining five state museums (Museum of Ancient Art, Historical Museum, Kunstmuseum, Museum of Cultures, Natural History Museum) in the hands of the parliament. As a central component of cultural expenditures, the museums have also been included in the intensified negotiations over the past several years between the two Basel cantons regarding payment for the city-provided services within the framework of a fiscal equalization scheme.
  Since the 1980s, the museums have experienced simultaneous trends toward popularization and aestheticization. The ensuing decades have been marked by a wave of new museum buildings whose avant-garde architecture has achieved international prominence. Contributing considerably to popularization was the exhibition concept of the Musée Sentimental, which focuses on the world of un-prosaic everyday culture and experience and led to a 1989 exhibition of the same name at the Museum of Design (Museum für Gestaltung). The annual Basel Museum Night tallies around a hundred thousand museum visits while the museums attract a total of approximately 1.4 million visitors throughout the year (as of 2006). The general population credits the museums with “a leading role in providing leisure-time opportunities for education and learning”. Museums operate in an environment that is increasingly subject to the conditions of both the leisure market and the free market, and are recognized as an important economic and locational factor. In contrast to the state, the use of private funds in the museum field has grown considerably. Funding from patrons or sponsors plays an increasingly significant role in the financing of exhibitions, parts of collections or entire museums and is thus highly sought after. This competitive situation is further reflected in the conside
caption: Historical Museum: The hall of the Barfüsser Church open to passers-by, 2008
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