Exhibition programme 2024

Kunsthaus Zürich is Switzerland’s largest museum for fine arts, spanning over eight centuries of art history, from the Middle Ages to the present. Artists as well as collectors and transhistorical alliances between the ancient and the modern have determined its history and institutional practice.

In 2024 the transhistorical theme of “viewing the old with fresh eyes” runs like a thread through a number of exhibitions, most notably the group show Apropos Hodler (March 8–June 30, 2024), which interprets the 19th century “iconic” Swiss artist Ferdinand Hodler in an entirely novel way, curated by a collective of exhibition makers and artists. Visual dialogues and conversations between artists across the centuries come to the fore in Barbara Visser. Alreadymade (February 9–May 12, 2024) in which the artist examines authenticity and authorship in relationship to Dada performer Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and the godfather of conceptual art Marcel Duchamp. Equally dialogical is the exhibition Matthew Wong: Vincent van Gogh (September 20, 2024–January 26, 2025), presented in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam. Radical and, in some cases, feminist approaches, both past and present, are showcased in the large-scale retrospectives of Kiki Kogelnik in spring (March 22–July 14, 2024) and Marina Abramović in autumn (October 25, 2024–February 16, 2025).

Artist-led rehangs of the permanent collection of the Kunsthaus itself feature in the series ReCollect!, where Ida Ekblad & Matias Faldbakken, Daniela Ortiz, feminist collective Hulda Zwingli and Yto Barrada interrogate the permanent historical collection of the Kunsthaus in resonance with new work of their own. The exhibition Born Digital (June 7–September 29, 2024) and the presentation around the “magical realism” of Swiss Albert Welti (November 15, 2024–February 9, 2025) dive deep into lesser known parts of the immense new media and graphical art collections of the Kunsthaus. How private collections resonate and are presented in the public sphere and which dilemmas this entails, is a central motive in a second series of exhibitions. The new exhibition around the much discussed (post)impressionist Bührle Collection—A Future for the Past: The Bührle Collection—art, context, war and conflict enters a new phase in 2024, kicked off by a performance of Alexis Blake (February 22, 24 and 25). A rehang of the Looser Collection with focus on Arte Povera, and the performative exhibition by Walid Raad (August 16–November 3, 2024), in collaboration with the Zürcher Theater Spektakel, TBA 21 and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection in Madrid testify to that.

For a full overview of all exhibitions and the partners we work with see website.