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We are very pleased to welcome you to the opening and throughout the exhibition, and would be delighted if you could join us – also in the company of your friends.
Opening: Tuesday, May 5, 2026, 6–8 pm
FOR ART, Rittergasse 25, Basel
Collection Martin and Veronika Burckhardt
Of Private Treasures and Public Commitment
As an architect and politician, he helped shape Basel’s architectural and cultural landscape. She turned their shared home in the Gellert district into a gathering place for figures from the worlds of art and culture. For decades, Martin and Veronika Burckhardt stood at the center of social life. The founding of the Karl August Burckhardt-Koechlin Fund also testifies to their true legacy: the conviction that private collecting can—and must—have a lasting impact and public significance.
Before works of art from the Burckhardt private collection are dispersed or enter the Public Art Collection as donations, FOR ART recalls once more the art-loving couple and their lived interweaving of art and life:
Against a backdrop of furnishings from the Burckhardt household, FOR ART offers insight into the private treasures of Martin and “Vrone” Burckhardt. Loans from the community of heirs, along with numerous drawings from the Karl August Burckhardt-Koechlin Fund held in the Kupferstichkabinett of the Kunstmuseum Basel, make visible how closely intertwined the private and the public are. From Amedeo Modigliani to Joseph Beuys, from Andy Warhol to Rosemary Trockel, from Leiko Ikemura to Markus Raetz, among others, this temporary presentation ignites a firework of personal predilections and graphic intelligence.
Yet this exhibition is not a nostalgic retrospective. Rather, it poses an urgent question to the city and the public—a question we deliberately place up for debate: Who assumes responsibility today? Who will shape Basel’s cultural landscape in the future? The example of the Burckhardts thus becomes a challenge to the present, which must reassess its role within the cultural commons.
Exhibition Hours
May 8 – June 27, 2026
Friday and Saturday
11 am – 6 pm
and by appointment
info@klauslittmann.com
Free admission
During Art Basel
June 14 – 21, 2026
Daily
11 am – 6 pm
more about FOR ART – A Temporary Art Intervention by Littmann Kulturprojekte. Basel 2025–2028
