Best Art Collection Luzern

Best Art Collection Luzern

The foundation BEST Art Collection Luzern is dedicated to the gratifying task of acquiring art for the public. In so doing, it supports one of the museum’s main objectives, which the Kunstgesellschaft Luzern (Lucerne Art Society) also set itself when it was founded in 1819, that of creating a picture archive for society.

The foundation BEST Art Collection Luzern regularly acquires important works and gives them to the museum on permanent loan. The acquisitions are made in accordance with Kunstmuseum Luzern’s collection concept. All the members of the Board of Trustees provide at least 2,000 francs each annually for the purchases. In addition, the Board of Trustees of the foundation BEST Art Collection Luzern aims to persuade institutions, businesses and individuals from their personal environment to make bequests and donations in support of the Kunstmuseum Luzern’s collection. Thanks to this commitment, the Kunstmuseum has received many important works in recent years, for example, by the Turner prize-winner Laure Prouvost, the painter Christine Streuli, who represented Switzerland at the 2007 Venice Biennale, the media artist Clemens von Wedemeyer, and Vivian Suter, who was honoured with the Swiss Grand Award for Art in 2021. The foundation currently owns some 200 works with a total value of 25 million francs.

The foundation council is made up of personalities from Central Switzerland. The new acquisition projects are presented and discussed at the annual session of the foundation council. In the course of each year the foundation council members meet for various events involving art, debate and socialising. The varied programme is complemented by excursions to institutions that have borrowed BEST works and visits to artists’ studios or other art venues.

Current acquisition project

Ugo Rondinone (*1964) is considered to be one of the most important contemporary Swiss artists. He has received numerous art prizes and represented Switzerland at the 52^nd Venice Biennale in 2007. The artist grew up in Brunnen, but over the course of his international career has adopted New York as his main place of residence, while at the same time always maintaining close ties with Central Switzerland. Ugo Rondinone’s connections with the Kunstmuseum Luzern go back a long time. In 1989 he took part in the Christmas exhibition Weihnachtsausstellung Innerschweizer Künstler and won the Exhibition Prize of the Kunstgesellschaft, which enabled him to mount a solo exhibition the following year. At that exhibition, the artist presented detailed ink landscape drawings, which today are in the Kunstmuseum’s collection. Ugo Rondinone is returning to his home country in 2024 with the retrospective Cry Me a River. For this exhibition he has created two new paintings in which he captures the view from Brunnen across the Vierwaldstättersee Lake, by day and by night. Visitors stand almost reverently in front of these striking landscapes rendered minimally with flat areas in five shades of blue. By way of a tribute to Félix Vallaton and Ferdinand Hodler, both of whom captured the overwhelming beauty of the Swiss landscape, Ugo Rondinone joins the ranks of that tradition. Whereas the artist has donated the night-time version (siebtermaizweitausendundvierundzwanzig, 2024) to the Kunstmuseum Luzern, the BEST Art Collection Luzern foundation is in the process of collecting funds to purchase the day version (sechstermaizweitausendundvierundzwanzig, 2024) in the form of generous contributions from the foundation’s council members.

Ugo Rondinone
sechstermaizweitausendundvierundzwanzig, 2024
Acrylic on canvas, 400 × 600 cm
Amount: CHF 360.000 (incl. museum discount)
Donations are welcome!