Museum of Cultures Basel
Encyclopedia
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
Museum der Kulturen Basel) is a Swiss
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
museum of ethnography
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
with large and important collections of artifacts, especially from Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, the South Pacific
Oceania
Oceania is a region centered on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Conceptions of what constitutes Oceania range from the coral atolls and volcanic islands of the South Pacific to the entire insular region between Asia and the Americas, including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago...
, Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and...
, Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
, and Bali
Bali
Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east...
. It is a Swiss heritage site of national significance
Swiss Inventory of Cultural Property of National and Regional Significance
The Swiss Inventory of Cultural Property of National and Regional Significance is a register of some 8,300 items of cultural property in Switzerland...
.
History
Both the Museum of Cultures and the Natural History Museum Basel trace their origins to the 1840s, when the city of Basel founded its Museum of Natural History and Ethnography to house artifacts and artworks collected by merchants and travelers.In 1849, the museum moved into a large neoclassical edifice designed by Melchior Berri
Melchior Berri
Melchior Berri was a well-known Swiss architect.He was the son of Melchior Berri and Appollonia Streckeisen. In 1832 he married Margaretha Simone Burckhardt of Basel....
and located on the Münster hill at the heart of Basel, on the site of a former Augustinian monastery. In 1904 the museum created a separate ethnology department (Abteilung für Völkerkunde), and in 1917 the ethnographic collection became an independent institution inside the same building as the Natural History Museum.
In the early 20th century, the Ethnographic Museum Basel began sponsoring expeditions to enhance its collections. In 1944 the museum was renamed the "Museum of Ethnology and Swiss Museum of Folklore" (Museum für Völkerkunde und Schweizerisches Museum für Volkskunde) to reflect its dual mission of documenting local as well as "foreign" cultures. Over time the museum shifted its focus to the promotion of intercultural
Cross-cultural communication
Cross-cultural communication is a field of study that looks at how people from differing cultural backgrounds communicate, in similar and different ways among themselves, and how they endeavour to communicate across cultures.- Origins :The Cold War, the United States economy...
dialog, leading to its official renaming in 1996 as the Museum of Cultures.
Collections and exhibitions
In 1844 the museum, still without a permanent home, received hundreds of ancient Mexican ceramics and statues collected by Lukas VischerLukas Vischer (collector)
Lukas Vischer was an amateur artist, traveler, and collector from Basel, Switzerland. During a nine-year residence in Mexico he assembled a notable collection of ancient Mexican sculptures and ceramics. Vischer's collection eventually formed a significant part of the holdings of the Museum of...
of Basel. It remains one of the most notable European collections of ancient American art. Recent exhibitions on Bhutan
Bhutan
Bhutan , officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked state in South Asia, located at the eastern end of the Himalayas and bordered to the south, east and west by the Republic of India and to the north by the People's Republic of China...
(1998), Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
(2001), and Bali
Bali
Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east...
(2002) have highlighted the museum's exceptional Asian and Oceanian collections.
With about 300,000 objects and a similar number of historic photographs, the museum is the largest of its kind in Switzerland and one of the biggest in Europe. It also serves the canton of Basel-City
Basel-City
Basel-Stadt is one of the 26 cantons of Switzerland. The city of Basel and the municipalities of Bettingen and Riehen form its territory.-History:...
by documenting and preserving the local cultural legacy. A 1999 exhibition was devoted to Basel's unique Carnival
Carnival of Basel
The Carnival of Basel is the biggest carnival in Switzerland and takes place annually between February and March in Basel. It has been listed as one of the top fifty local festivities in Europe.- Overview :...
(Fasnacht) tradition, and the 2005 "Festivals of Light" exhibition explored the city's religious diversity.
The museum's most recent exhibitions have emphasized inter-cultural comparisons and dialog. The 2007-2008 exhibition "Red: Hot on the Trail of a Color" drew on all of the museum's resources to explore the significance of red
Red
Red is any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths of light discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 630–740 nm. Longer wavelengths than this are called infrared , and cannot be seen by the naked eye...
in human societies.
Renovation
In 2008, the museum opened a new main entrance on the Münsterplatz, making the museum more accessible and giving it a clearly distinct identity from the Museum of Natural History. The museum plans to further expand its exhibition space. These plans are on hold to allow for a thorough archaeological investigation of the museum courtyard. As of July 2008 investigators had found evidence of late RomanRoman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
settlement on the site.