Foundation Best Art Collection Luzern

Foundation Best Art Collection Luzern

The foundation BEST Art Collection Luzern is dedicated to the gratifying task of acquiring art for the public. In so doing, it supports one of the museum’s main objectives, which the Kunstgesellschaft Luzern (Lucerne Art Society) also set itself when it was founded in 1819, that of creating a picture archive for society.

The foundation BEST Art Collection Luzern regularly acquires important works and gives them to the museum on permanent loan. The acquisitions are made in accordance with Kunstmuseum Luzern’s collection concept. All the members of the Board of Trustees provide at least 2,000 francs each annually for the purchases. In addition, the Board of Trustees of the foundation BEST Art Collection Luzern aims to persuade institutions, businesses and individuals from their personal environment to make bequests and donations in support of the Kunstmuseum Luzern’s collection. Thanks to this commitment, the Kunstmuseum has received many important works in recent years, for example, by the Turner prize-winner Laure Prouvost, the painter Christine Streuli, who represented Switzerland at the 2007 Venice Biennale, the media artist Clemens von Wedemeyer, and Vivian Suter, who was honoured with the Swiss Grand Award for Art in 2021. The foundation currently owns some 200 works with a total value of 25 million francs.

The foundation council is made up of personalities from Central Switzerland. The new acquisition projects are presented and discussed at the annual session of the foundation council. In the course of each year the foundation council members meet for various events involving art, debate and socialising. The varied programme is complemented by excursions to institutions that have borrowed BEST works and visits to artists’ studios or other art venues.

Acquisition Project 2025/2026

The work Pomazany niebem (Smudged with the Sky) is a key piece by the Polish artist Maria Pinińska-Bereś (1931–1999), who is regarded as one of the pioneers of the feminist avant-garde. The sculpture resembles a pink bird or a butterfly; although positioned on the ground, its wings are open and could move at any moment, setting the object in flight. The colour pink is characteristic of the Polish sculptor: at the heart of her poetic-political art lies an exploration of femininity and the associated social challenges. The colour pink is her hallmark and clearly conveys her critical stance: as a supposedly feminine colour that stands for the domestic, the body and a feminist critique, it is clearly distinguishable from the red omnipresent at the time in communist Poland.

With the support of the Foundation BEST Art Collection Luzern, this unique work can be secured for the collection of the Kunstmuseum Luzern. In addition to preserving the legacy of the exhibition programme, the presence of female artists in the collection will be strengthened. Furthermore, the collection’s focus – which has earned the institution an international reputation for conceptual and performative art from the 1960s to the 1980s – will be further deepened.

Maria Pinińska-Bereś
Pomazany niebem / Smudged with the Sky, 1985
Plywood, fabric filled with synthetic foam, 135 x 192 x 110 cm
Amount: CHF 120.000 (incl. museum discount)