Exhibition opening «Tour d’Horizon – Werke aus der Sammlung migros museum für gegenwartskunst»

The exhibition’s first section takes a look at the phase of growing professionalization in the collection’s history, which coincided with the existence of the InK (1987–1981), the institutional precursor to today’s museum. The InK, or “Internationale neue Kunst” (International New Art), is regarded as a pioneering institution, a model of its type: the “museum” of contemporary art. Led by Urs Raussmüller, the InK was conceived as an open and experimental site of production and reception; its central emphasis was on the creative process, and the public was sometimes invited to come and watch. Artists such as Bruce Nauman, Robert Ryman, Jannis Kounellis, and Lothar Baumgarten, who had already established reputations as protagonists on the international art scene, were invited to produce solo and group shows—some of the works on display then entered the collection. But the InK was most importantly also a scene of encounters, of the dissemination and exchange of ideas between the local and international art scenes. The InK era constitutes a sort of conceptual precursor for the subsequent reintroduction of formats that dovetail the exhibition programming with the efforts to expand the collection. On display in this section is a selection of works created in substantial connection with the institution by artists such as Jan Dibbets (b. 1941), Donald Judd (1928–1994), Klaudia Schifferle (b. 1955), and Giuseppe Penone (b. 1947), who showed their work at the InK. These works are complemented by documents from the InK’s archives.