Fondation Baur
Museum of Far Eastern Art
- The collections of the Baur Foundation, Museum of Far Eastern Art, comprise some 9000 Chinese and Japanese art objects, housed in an elegant late 19th century town house.
- Acquired by the Swiss collector Alfred Baur (1865-1951) over a period of some 45 years, these exquisite works of art include Chinese imperial ceramic ware, jades and snuff bottles from the 10th to the 19th centuries, as well as Japanese prints, lacquer, netsuke, and sword fittings. Since 1995, several donations, notably of Chinese lacquer ware, export ceramics, Chinese and Japanese textiles and an important collection of objects for the Japanese Tea Ceremony, have further enriched the museum’s collections.
Plus léger que l'air: 30 October to 2 February
Special offer :
15 CHF
Buy 1, get 1 free
Permanent exhibition only = 10 CHF
Fill in the form below to get your tickets
Building E, door 40, level 1.
Mon. to Fri. : 9am – 1:30pm / 2pm to 5pm
022 917 11 11
CERN map
100 years ago, in April 1924, during his trip to the Land of the Rising Sun, Alfred Baur, an extraordinary entrepreneur and founder of the Museum of East Asian Art, discovered during the cherry blossom season the poetry imbued with lightness of the “pictures of the floating world” (ukiyo-e), associated with the landscapes of the master printmakers and the delicate patterns adorning the objects in his collection.
In echo to his taste and pioneering spirit, and as part of the 160th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Switzerland and Japan, this exhibition evokes the aspirations for lightness that permeate Japanese culture, which we also find in Uehara Michiko, a major representative of textile arts. In the subtropical light of her native region in Okinawa, an archipelago in the far south of Japan, this virtuoso of weaving and dyeing creates sublime fabrics as fine as a “dragonfly’s wing.” From the symbiotic relationship she has with natural fibers is born, in her words, “woven air,” a boundless journey attuned to life. This quest and challenge are reminiscent of those of explorer Bertrand Piccard, whose solar-powered airplane, a giant dragonfly, combines extreme strength and lightness with its carbon fiber structure, tracing a harmonious path between humanity, earth, and sky…
Through the “woven air” of the Pacific and in a world ravaged by wars, we can bet that Alfred Baur would have celebrated, just as we do, the virtuosity of craftsmanship, the blooming of cherry blossoms, and the free, agile flight of dragonflies…