Before the museum closes for renovation from 2024 to 2025, Forever Young will show all the paintings of French Impressionism, other important groups of works by Corot and Boudin, and the Venetian vedute, one more time. Almost all the well-known names are represented: Cassatt, Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and Sisley. Today, the Langmatt is one of the most important private collections of Impressionism in Europe.
Ash Keating (*1980 in Melbourne/Australia, lives there) has made an international name for himself with spectacular paintings of entire buildings and huge walls. In a public, performative action shortly before the Badenfahrt, Ash Keating transformes the caretaker's house in the Langmatt park, which had been somewhat neglected throughout it life, into a huge three-dimensional painting.
Reto Boller (*1966 in Zurich, lives there) is one of the most inventive Swiss artists. As part of the overall renovation of Langmatt, Reto Boller – alongside the artist duo Bigler/Weibel and Silvan Wegmann – was invited to participate in one of three process-based long-term art projects. Three different perspectives and artistic media accompany and document the structural changes during the approximately two-year overall renovation.
In 2023, the Langmatt is transformed into a veritable haunted house. Various ghosts of unknown origin as well as undead pets, former residents and servants haunt the more than hundred-year-old villa and spread fear and terror. The comedy audio guide «Geisterhaus Langmatt» lets the numerous ghosts have their say for the first time. There will be plenty of humour and unexpected surprises.
Years before Sidney W. Brown (1865-1941) found a home in Baden, he sought great adventure overseas. The family archive invites you on an extraordinary journey with bold people and wonderful objects halfway around the globe and back.
The exhibition series «Raumfahrt» (Space Travel) presents young Swiss art in the basement rooms of the museum. The term «space travel» is to be taken quite literally, as the public is invited to explore formerly inaccessible rooms of the Langmatt and get to know a «different» Langmatt beyond the stately rooms on the upper floor.
Since the Brown family moved into their Art Nouveau villa, it has undergone a series of structural metamorphoses that tell of changing demands. Historical plans, correspondence and building invoices, photographic views and architectural trouvailles trace the eventful history from an intimate place of work and residence to a museum open to the public.
Silvia Bächli (*1956 in Baden, lives in Basel and Paris) is considered one of the most important artists in the medium of drawing. Her work was already shown internationally in the 1990s. In the painting gallery of the Museum Langmatt, she is showing a new series of large-format works on paper, presented as a loosely circulating band on the walls. Rhythmised at different intervals, the individual drawings develop an installation-like, expansive energy that enters into an exciting dialogue with the historical exhibition space.
Mark Wallinger (* 1959 in Chigwell, lives in London) is considered one of the most significant present-day British artists. In the 1990s, he was one of the “Young British Artists” (with Tracy Emin, Damien Hirst, and others) who shattered conventions with wild stunts, rejuvenation the concept of art. The Museum Langmatt exhibition will be the first time that Mark Wallinger’s large-format Action Painting-like artworks: gestural images reduced to black-and-white.
The Museum Langmatt presents the first Swiss solo exhibition by Rose Wylie (* 1934 in Kent, where she currently lives). She is considered one of the most significant British artists of the present day, even though she achieved her breakthrough at a great age through events such as the highly-regarded exhibition at the Tate Britain 2013 and in the Serpentine Gallery in 2017. Once again, the Langmatt offers the chance to discover a remarkable artist who pursues her artistic path courageously and undeterred.
In the cellar of the Langmatt, young Swiss artists are once again given a platform for their current work. For the sixth time, «Raumfahrt» (Space Travel) takes the pulse of the young generation and provides surprising insights into new developments. At first glance, museums and insects would not appear to have a great deal in common. Spiders and woodlice are frequent but unwelcome guests in (in particular) the Langmatt’s cellar spaces, where exhibitions in the «Raumfahrt» series take place. The next instalment of «Raumfahrt» will take a look at these uninvited guests from an artistic perspective. We generally do not anthropomorphise insects, spiders and lice or show them affection, instead reacting to them with distaste and revulsion.
Eric Hattan (*1955 in Wettingen, lives in Basel and Paris, France) is one of the most inventive conceptual artists in Switzerland. His artistic language is chameleon-like in various media and has been attracting international attention for many years. The title of the solo exhibition alludes to British tea culture and thus to the origins of Sidney Brown, who lived in Langmatt with his wife Jenny and his three sons. In the historic rooms of the villa, Eric Hattan surprises with contrasting dialogues between the present and the Belle Époque.
Birgit Kempker (* 1956 in Wuppertal, lives in Basel) is one of Switzerland’s most mysterious and most inventive authors. In the Langmatt, she appears for the first time as a fearless graphical artist. In her sketches, language and images find a common wavelength; they pose major existential questions in a fully forceful way, but also with a delicate and vulnerable quality. In these artworks, humour and desperation are revealed in a paradoxical and magical symbiosis, with an inescapable suggestive impact.
Die Langmatt wurde Schauplatz eines Verbrechens! Kommissarin Hugentobler ist zur Stelle, um das Rätsel mit Hilfe der Tiere der Sammlung zu lösen. Das Comedy-Hörstück «Tatort Langmatt» gibt Hinweise und begleitet eine abenteuerliche Spurensuche durchs Museum. «Tatort Langmatt» ist ein digitales Vermittlungsprojekt für alle Generationen, das zu einer spielerischen Entdeckung einer erstaunlichen Vielfalt an Tieren in der Sammlung einlädt.
What do impressionist paintings look like without frames? Is it even allowed to show them like that? And how do they look in other frames, in silver, black or contemporary ones? The exhibition shows the unexpected extent to which frames shape perception and perceptual habits. A surprising presentation of the Langmatt's largest group of Impressionists.
13 contemporary artists, all of whom have previously exhibited at the Museum Langmatt, send greetings to the Langmatt in digital form. These postcard-sized greetings will be printed out, to appear boldly among the Impressionist works in the collection. As the exhibition continues, they will be joined by further “greetings”, resulting in a continuing state of change. Members of the public will also have the opportunity to send their greetings to the Langmatt, and a selection of these will also be presented.
To celebrate the anniversary, we are holding a comprehensive exhibition of the collection entitled «Chamber of the Heart – 30 Years of the Museum Langmatt». This is a presentation of a wide variety of the most significant and interesting images and objects in the collection in the painting gallery – the “heart chamber” of the Langmatt.
As guest artist for the anniversary exhibition «Chamber of the Heart – 30 Years of the Museum Langmatt» Sandra Senn is exhibiting 38 subtle text interventions, created for the Langmatt’s rooms, the historical annexe building, and further locations in the park as well as new artistic photographs.
In the salon, which immediately follows the entrance area, the vedute decorated the walls for many years. The new presentation in the rooms on the upper floor provides a fresh view of this remarkable series of vedute and invites visitors to take intellectual walks through the Serenissima.
For the fourth time, the Space Travel exhibition series takes the pulse of young Swiss art, presenting current examples in the cellar spaces. With artworks by Frédéric Gabioud (* 1990, Lausanne), Martin Jakob (* 1989, St-Aubin-Sauges), Noha Mokhtar (*1987, Geneva).
Renée Levi (* 1960 in Istanbul, lives in Basel) is among Switzerland’s most significant artists working in paintings and installations. Her artwork has been exhibited internationally for more than 20 years, and also appears in significant public and private collections at home and abroad.
The exhibition of works from the collection If pictures could speak … presents selected French Impressionist masterpieces and their astonishing histories, incorporating previously unseen archive materials and historic photographs.
With a touch of humour, this venerable art nouveau villa transforms into a “sanatorium” dedicated to caring for the physical and psychological well-being of its visitors. They become temporary “patients”, wandering through the house and park in search of recovery.
The third edition of Raumfahrt (Space Journey) once again presents snapshots of young Swiss contemporary art. The term “Space Journey” is intended to be taken quite literally: visitors explore diverse cellar spaces not normally open to the public. This year, Space Journey expands to include a new room.
For the first time, the astonishing paintings of Margot Bergman (b. 1934 in Chicago) can be discovered on this side of the Atlantic. In association with the Museum Folkwang Essen and Urbane Künste Ruhr, Switzerland’s Museum Langmatt is holding the first solo exhibition of her work in Europe.
Norbert Bisky (* 1970 in Leipzig, lives in Berlin) is one of the most important international figurative painters of his generation. His seemingly heroic figures fall from the sky or are involved in rebellious uprisings.
The exhibition Space Travel II invites the public to explore (cellar) rooms that were not or rarely accessible. The second issue of Space Travel shows a current spectrum of young Swiss art, which consciously evades the rapid consumption of art with its strikingly raw works.
Selected masterpieces of French Impressionism from the collection of the Langmatt present themselves in new neighborhoods in the exhibition rooms of the 1st floor. The comparatively small rooms let the pictures lead directly into their own sensuality.
Seven masterpieces of French Impressionism seek temporary lovers. Not other works of art, but underdogs from the cellar of the Langmatt. Historic wine racks or mysterious chandelier wrappings "ground" the high-priced pictures and draw attention to the everyday motifs of the Impressionists.
Important Swiss authors and artists of all generations let the rooms on the 1st floor of the Langmatt speak in very different ways. An interdisciplinary exhibition with new, site-specific works that sheds light on the amazing permeability of the two genres.
