The Museum of Fine Arts Bern (German: ''Kunstmuseum Bern''), established in 1879 in Bern, is the museum of fine arts of the de facto capital of Switzerland. Its holdings run from the Middle Ages to the present. It houses works by

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented ...

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

Edmond Jean de Pury Baron Edmond Jean de Pury (6 March 1845 – 7 November 1911) was a Swiss painter and engraver. Biography De Pury was born on 6 March 1845 in Neuchâtel. He was a member of a Prussian noble family and was a nephew of James-Ferdinand de Pury. H ...

Ferdinand Hodler Ferdinand Hodler (March 14, 1853 – May 19, 1918) was one of the best-known Swiss painters of the nineteenth century. His early works were portraits, landscapes, and genre paintings in a realistic style. Later, he adopted a personal form of ...

, Méret Oppenheim, Ricco Wassmer and Adolf Wölfli. The collection consists of over 3,000 paintings and sculptures as well as 48,000 drawings, prints, photographs, videos and films. In May 2014, the museum was named sole heir in the will of Cornelius Gurlitt, the German collector associated with the 2012 Munich artworks discovery. The authorities had found over 1,400 artworks, many of them suspected to be stolen from European Jews by the Nazis, in Gurlitt's homes in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

and

Salzburg Salzburg (, ; literally "Salt-Castle"; bar, Soizbuag, label= Austro-Bavarian) is the fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020, it had a population of 156,872. The town is on the site of the Roman settlement of ''Iuvavum''. Salzburg was founded ...

. The museum was given six months to decide whether it would accept the bequest and its terms. The most important provision required that the museum conduct research into the provenance of the paintings and make restitution where needed to the heirs of the original owners. The museum director, Matthias Frehner, pledged that it would do so if it accepted the bequest. The German government quietly urged the museum to accept the collection in order to provide a neutral place where research into its history could continue. (There was concern that if the collection were dispersed among Gurlitt's distant relatives, there would be no guarantee that they would conduct the research properly.) Determining whether or not to accept required much deliberation on the part of the museum board, work by its legal team, and significant fundraising from Swiss donors, so that the museum would not be reliant on German funding that could taint the neutrality of the provenance research. In November 2014 the board voted to accept the collection. In August 2018, an episode of ''

Fake or Fortune ''Fake or Fortune?'' is a BBC One documentary television series which examines the provenance and attribution of notable artworks. Since the first series aired in 2011, ''Fake or Fortune?'' has drawn audiences of up to 5 million viewers in ...

'' featured the director of the museum Dr. Nina Zimmer asking the team to investigate what appears to be the sole British piece of art in the Gurlitt collection.

References

External links

Official Museum of Fine Arts Bern website
— ''info on history + collections''.
Credit-suisse.com: Interview with the Director of Bern Museum of Fine Arts
{{Authority control Art museums and galleries in Switzerland Museums in Bern Art museums established in 1879 1879 establishments in Switzerland Neoclassical architecture in Switzerland