Newsletter

Newsletter 01/2025

Starting in March 2025, the artist’s studio and the historic apartment will once again be accessible with guided tours. The permanent exhibition, featuring 15 themes on the life and work of Albert Anker, is open year-round. The Art Pavilion is being prepared for the new temporary exhibition, which will present Albert Anker in a new light from May to September 2025.

The exhibition entitled “Fascination Japan. The Collection of Albert Anker” shows a remarkable collection of 19th century Japanese colour woodcuts in the rare crepe paper technique, the Chirimen-e, which Anker collected in the same way as his colleague Vincent van Gogh. The city of Paris, where Anker lived in winter for over 30 years, became the European centre of Japonism in the second half of the 19th century. The influence of Japanese works on European artistic sensibilities fuelled artists’ collecting activities at the time.

The discovery that the Albert Anker Centre’s collection contained a previously unexplored collection of Japanese art on paper led to a collaboration with Professor Hans Bjarne Thomsen, Professor of East Asian Art History at the University of Zurich, and doctoral student Saskia Goldschmid. They are researching this valuable group of works and making them accessible to the public for the first time. In a first step, the works will be inventoried, restored according to the latest scientific standards and photographed.

All the Chirimen-e and other woodcuts from Albert Anker’s collection will be on display in the exhibition, as well as Asian vessels and lacquer works.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue (German-English, summary in Japanese). The educational programme offers workshops on Japanese calligraphy, ink drawing and ikebana.

The temporary exhibition will be open from 24 May 2025. The exhibition lasts until 21 September 2025.

Read the Newsletter in German or French