Â鶹APP

Entrance to the Barbier-Mueller Museum. Photo by Ji-Elle.

Top 10 Amazing Facts about Barbier-Mueller Museum

The Barbier-Mueller Museum was established in 1977 and is located at 10 rue Jean-Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland. Its collection includes works of art from Tribal and Classical antiquity, as well as sculptures, fabrics, and ornaments from “primitive” civilizations around the world.

Its mission is to preserve, research, and publish the collection started by Josef Müller in 1907 and continued by his daughter Monique and son-in-law Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller.

Itinerant exhibitions, loans to other museums, and the publication of numerous catalogs and art books have earned the museum international acclaim.

In 1997, the Museu Barbier-Mueller d’Art Precolomb in Barcelona, Spain, was inaugurated. It is on Montcada Street, opposite the Picasso Museum, in the Nadal Palace.

It is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Seniors, students, children aged 12 to 17, jobseekers, and groups of more than ten people pay CHF 5. For children under the age of twelve, schools, and children’s activity centers Swiss Museum Pass, Swiss Pass Travel, Assurance invalidité cardholders, Geneva Pass, ICOM members, Friends of the Museum (+ 8 guests) enter for free.

Other guided tours are available upon request (CHF 150 + CHF 5 per visitor) and on certain Sundays. Private events can be held in the museum’s exhibition rooms and inner courtyard.

1. The museum was founded by Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller and his father-in-law

Bactrian Princess: Barbier-Mueller Museum. Photo by Neoclassicism Enthusiast.

Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller founded the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva in 1977 to share his passion for traditional arts with the public. Over the course of more than a century, Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller and his father-in-law Josef Mueller amassed the world’s largest private collection of traditional arts from Africa, Asia, Oceania, pre-Columbian America, and various ancient civilizations.

Barbier-Mueller was dedicated to ensuring that the museum’s collections were studied by the best specialists, displayed, and published. With itinerant exhibitions, loans to various museums around the world, and the establishment of Barbier-Mueller museums in Barcelona and Cape Town, he sought to make known and encourage recognition for non-Western arts, both in Switzerland and internationally.

2. The Barbier-Mueller Museum opened after Mueller’s death

Entrance to the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva (Switzerland). Photo by Mourad Ben Abdallah.

The Barbier-Mueller Museum opened in 1977, just months after Mueller’s death. Monique, Barbier also made significant contributions to the establishment of the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in Â鶹APP, donating thousands of objects. In addition to its permanent collection, the Barbier-Mueller Museum now mounts two exhibitions per year from its own holdings.

3. The museum’s mission goes beyond art

The Museum, in collaboration with Vacheron-Constantin, has established a foundation that sends researchers around the world to study cultures on the verge of extinction. At the museum, they are interested in more than just objects. They are attempting to help preserve the memory of a diverse range of peoples, which is often rapidly fading.

Anthropologists from the foundation have written about cultures such as the Gan of Burkina Faso, the Yaure of Côte d’Ivoire, and the Na of Yunnan and Sichuan in China. The Kararaô of Central Brazil will be the subject of a forthcoming foundation publication.

4. The museum has gained international acclaim

Through itinerant exhibitions, loans to other museums, and the publication of numerous catalogs and art books, the museum has gained international acclaim.

5. The museum hosts 2 thematic exhibitions annually

Every year, the Musée Barbier-Mueller hosts two thematic exhibitions that feature a selection of objects from its collection. Each of the four basement rooms houses pieces with a geographical or cultural provenance over a longer period of time. The Musée Barbier-itinerant Mueller’s exhibitions, loans to other institutions, and publications have earned it international recognition.

6. The Musée Barbier-Mueller has a thriving publishing department

Person holding white cordless computer mouse. Photo by Markus Spiske.

The Musée Barbier-Mueller has an active publishing division. It has published catalogs, art books, reviews, and ethnographic studies with the collaboration of the best specialists since its inception. These works are available for purchase through the museum shop and the online bookstore.

7. Contemporary art is found at the museum

The Musée Barbier-Mueller is a sanctuary of objects from various origins, each one more remarkable than the last. It houses a collection that is recognized internationally as a leading center for the so-called “primitive” – or “distant” – arts, depending on the terminology in use at the time.

Ceramics, which falls under the umbrella of contemporary art and its contextual practices, seeks encounters with whatever generates continuities and disjunctions in human expression across time and space. The past does not truly pass in the field of the arts. Forms reactivate, reappear, re-appropriate one another, and recombine.

8. The 40th anniversary of the Musee Barbier Mueller was a unique event

The celebration was divided into three parts. The first is a series of events at other locations as a result of a collaboration with twenty-two Swiss-French museums. Throughout 2017, these institutions hosted objects from their collections that are related to these activities, as well as objects from their own holdings or temporary exhibitions.

9. The museum’s exhibitions have never been limited to Geneva

Samurai. The splendor of Japanese chivalry at Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection. Photo by Rabe.

The intention is always to organize traveling exhibitions. There have been over 80 major shows, all with massive catalogs, and they frequently come to Geneva last, after 15 or 16 museum venues in the United States. One of the exhibitions, “Man-Made Jewels, Jewels of the Earth: Jean Paul & Alexis Barbier-Mueller Collections,”; features an extraordinary collection of ethnic jewelry from almost every era and corner of the world, with materials ranging from gold, silver, and jadeite to ivory, feathers, and shells. Each piece is artfully complemented by minerals drawn from Alexis’s collection that are equally exuberantly structured.

10. The museum’s collection is inspired by humanity’s diversity and capacity for creation

Warrior figure with spear and shield. Photo by Ji-Elle.

When collector and museum founder Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller discovered a previously unknown form of creativity, he was intrigued, astounded, and eager to learn more. That is why he established a foundation to conduct research on underserved ethnic groups.