page_title: Museums in Basel
section_title: Division of the public collections into state museums
hierarchical_section_title: Museums in Basel / Development of the museums / Museums in the city / Division of the public collections into state museums
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig. Ansicht Rückseite mit Anbau Oberlichtsaal Erdgeschoss von 1966.
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: Parallel to the specialization of the educational and research disciplines that took hold at the beginning of the 19th century, Basel's wide-ranging holdings of objects evolved into institutional collections divided according to various scientific fields. They were very different from the cabinets of curiosities that, according to the Basel professor Wilhelm Wackernagel, had merely involved "[mindless grabbing] at curiosities with a half-pedantic, half-childish zeal". The Natural History Museum (Naturhistorisches Museum) founded in 1821 was the first step in this new direction. In 1836, the art collection was made legally independent from the university library with a separate publicly funded art commission to oversee it. In 1856, the "medieval collection" took up residence in auxiliary rooms and annexes of the Basel Cathedral (Bishop's Court, St. Nicholas Chapel), having been established earlier that year with inventories from the Museum on Augustinergasse based on the model of the German National Museum in Nuremberg. In 1887, castings of ancient sculptures were put on display in the Sculpture Hall of the Basel Art Association (Basler Kunstverein). Meanwhile, in 1874, the chemistry and physics institutes had moved into the new Bernoullianum building for the study of the natural sciences, whereupon their holdings of objects shed their collection character in favor of laboratory facilities. The canton had difficulty amassing funding and support for the creation of another museum for its collections. The Museum on Augustinergasse had represented a formidable beginning, yet remained the only one of its kind for nearly fifty years.
  In 1892, the "antiquarian collection" (small artifacts of antiquity, excluding ethnological objects) was joined with the medieval collection of the Basel Cathedral and historical weapons from the Basel Armory to form the Historical Museum Basel (Historisches Museum Basel), with exhibition space in the reconverted Barfüsser Church from 1894 onwards. Today this museum houses the Upper Rhine's most comprehensive collection of cultural history, showing artisanal crafts (Cathedral Treasury, goldsmith works, stained glass) and objects of everyday culture (furnishings, tapestries, coin cabinet). Major emphasis is placed on the Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque periods. The entire inventory of books was incorporated into the collection of the new University Library in 1896. The "ethnographic collection", which was given the title Collection of Ethnology (Sammlung für Völkerkunde) in 1905, moved into new space created by an addition to the Museum on Augustinergasse in 1917, where it became the Museum of Ethnology (Museum für Völkerkunde). With holdings of approximately 300,000 objects and a comparable number of historical photographs, it is the largest ethnological museum in Switzerland and one of the largest in Europe. The collection includes objects from Europe, Ancient Egypt, Africa, Asia (Tibet and Bali Collections), Ancient America and Oceania. In 1944, the federal administration distinguished its European holdings as the Swiss Museum of Ethnology (Schweizerisches Museum für Volkskunde). However, since 1997 this division no longer exists; non-European and European collections are now joined in the Basel Museum of Cultures (Museum der Kulturen Basel), whose name intentionally expresses a change in emphasis from the presentation of “foreign” cultures to intercultural dialogue. The Natural History Museum Basel (Naturhistorisches Museum Basel), which features most areas of the natural sciences (anthropology, mineralogy, paleontology, vertebrates, insects including the Frey Collection of Beetles and other invertebrates), has not only remained in its original location since 1849 but has also retained its traditional name. Its collections, comprising nearly eight million objects which are also dedicated to scientific research, bear the title "Archives of Life".
  The public art collection was installed in the upper story of the Museum on Augustinergasse in 1849. Its continuing growth led to increasing 
caption: Basel Museum of Ancient Art and Ludwig Collection, rear annex with roof lighting
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