Peter Zumthor’s Expansion at Beyeler Foundation Is Ready to Welcome Visitors

The Beyeler Foundation, just outside the Swiss city of Basel, has long been a major destination for art lovers. It has an enviable collection, built by founders Ernst and Hildy Beyeler, which contains serious gems of modern art by Claude Monet, Alberto Giacometti, and Pablo Picasso, and has been expanded assiduously with contemporary equivalents. It’s also a place for pioneering exhibitions such as its 2024 summer show “Dance with Demons,” where artist Tino Sehgal rearranged the exhibition hang on a daily basis as puzzled visitors watched technicians take pictures off walls and sculptures off plinths, and for exacting history shows like 2022’s re-investigation of Piet Mondrian.

This week, it finally opened three new buildings—plus a beautifully refurbished bin shed—all by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. Additional spaces were carved out of the original 18th-century building to bring a 1970s-vibe listening lounge and a plant house and shop for garden lovers into the mix (the last in tones of yellow-green by Galerie Creative Mind designer India Madhavi). A tiny 18th-century belvedere has been revived where, according to Beyeler’s director Sam Keller, “anything could happen. If an artist likes the look of it, they’re welcome to use it.”

Keller is unsurprisingly enthused by the results, which took several years and at least $145 million, nearly all from private donations. But what is now called the “new ensemble” is not to be launched with a one-off extravaganza. Keller wants to test the waters slowly. From September 26 through January 14, 2027, it will welcome a reduced number of visitors to paying exhibitions over fewer opening hours. He’s letting both visitors and staff give feedback on logistics and experience. “We want to make it the best we can,” he says.

The Beyeler has always had the advantage of the long, low, top-lit building by Renzo Piano, with which it opened in 1997. It lies elegantly in its own parkland, looking out over fields, and allows the water from a pond to lap right up to its window. The pond contains an exquisite vibrating artwork by French artist Philippe Parreno that makes waterlily-shaped ripples in the water.

Now the parkland has doubled in size, and Zumthor has increased the exhibition space from 36,500 square feet to nearly 53,800. Gunter Vogt has landscaped the new gardens into idyllic forested slopes which roll away from the primary new building—a series of cubes in rammed concrete that glistens with limestone from the nearby Jura Mountains—and it is filled with winding paths and art. A huge version of Louise Bourgeois’s commanding spider Maman sits at the building’s Y-shaped back, so formed to fit around a century-old gingko tree.

Zumthor seems rather pleased, too. Both the serenity of the pavilion and the white Wyss building are a testament to what happens when a building is almost entirely handmade. The pavilion, lined in cherry and pearwood to evoke the plentiful fruit trees outside, is a place for resting, as well as performances. Zumthor even designed the cushions which sit on the wood amphitheater-style seating and the tiny glass nippled lights which hang from the ceiling. A canopy clad in a deep red textile that hangs over the stage is a bespoke unit containing all necessary services. Patti Smith will appear here soon; Wim Wenders and Zumthor will be discussing the former’s latest film, which happens to feature the new building.

A team of five made the rammed earth walls of the Wyss. “It’s molded, layered, made by hand. Even from the outside you can see it has a [human] history, and all the irregularities,” says Zumthor. Inserted all around its perimeter are polished limestone benches. “You should be able to lean up against a building, and connect with it directly,” he adds.

Zumthor puts the scattered nature of the project down to his love of art itself. “I don’t want it to be up against anything else,” he says. Consequently, he broke down the brief for one monolithic container into several. As a result, visitors to the Wyss are among the artworks the minute they are over the threshold and treading across the satiny white terrazzo floor.

Keller still professes a deep love for the original building by Renzo Piano, which certainly helped put the Beyeler on the map. “It has worked well for exhibitions from Goya to Pierre Huyghe,” he says. He can’t help but get excited about the possibilities of his extended ensemble. In the listening room, or Salon, in which a huge painting by sound system fan Peter Doig hangs, artists will be invited to bring their own vinyl for indulgent sessions. Meanwhile, the park and the pavilion are open to anyone during museum hours. “You can bring your laptop, have a meeting, fall asleep,” says Keller.

But the art is always paramount at the Beyeler, and the opening exhibition, “Constellations,” brings modern and contemporary into conversation across both sites. A stunning room of Monets in the original building is reprised in the presence of a Monet waterlily triptych in the new one, where Ronnie Horn’s liquid glass sculptures dot the floor. “We wanted our first installation to connect with the landscape, earth, trees, water and so on,” says Keller, who avers that the triptych “looks as good on this side as it did on the other.” Alexander Calder mobiles hang delicately in side cabinets. An impressive series of paintings by René Magritte is matched with the dark surrealism of Robert Gober.