Bechtler Museum of Modern Art

The Bechtler Museum of Modern Art is a 36,500-square-foot museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, dedicated to mid-20th-century modern art. Opened on January 2, 2010, it houses more than 1,400 artworks assembled and inherited by Andreas Bechtler, a Swiss-born Charlotte resident, and forms part of the Levine Center for the Arts in Uptown Charlotte. The museum is distinguished by its focus on European, particularly School of Paris, modernism as seen through the lens of a single family's collecting history, and by its building designed by Swiss architect Mario Botta, the only other Botta-designed structure in the United States besides the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The museum's origins lie in the collecting activities of brothers Hans and Walter Bechtler of Zurich, Switzerland, who began visiting the Kunsthaus Zürich and local galleries in 1950. Over nearly seven decades, Hans and his wife Bessie amassed a collection emphasizing artists' working methods, including drawings and preparatory works. Their son Andreas grew up among artists, became an artist and entrepreneur himself, and moved to Charlotte in 1979. After inheriting part of his parents' collection and adding his own acquisitions, Andreas Bechtler committed the collection to Charlotte. The museum opened to the public on January 2, 2010, with former mayor Anthony Foxx and Andreas Bechtler in attendance. Until the museum's opening, only a handful of these artworks had been publicly exhibited in the United States, as the collection had remained privately held by the Bechtler family.

The Bechtler collection reflects major art movements and schools of the 20th century, with particular depth in the School of Paris after World War II. The holdings reveal principally the tastes and opportunities of a Zurich-based family of collectors, viewing European, British, and American artists through their personal lens. The collection encompasses mid-century modern art in various media. Specific strengths include abstraction and figural subjects associated with postwar European modernism. American and British artists are also well represented, often through personal relationships: Mark Tobey, who worked in Zurich and knew the Bechtler family, and British artist Ben Nicholson, who spent summers in the Italian region of Switzerland and served as an artistic mentor to a teenage Andreas Bechtler. The collection comprises approximately 1,400 works.

The collection includes works by Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Andy Warhol, Jean Tinguely, Barbara Hepworth, and Pablo Picasso. Many artists are represented through explorations of particular themes across multiple media and approaches. A signature outdoor work is The Firebird (Le Grand Oiseau de Feu sur l'Arche), a 1991 sculpture by Franco-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle. Standing 17 feet 5 inches tall and weighing 1,433 pounds, it is composed of approximately 7,500 mirror mosaics over polyester on a steel armature. Andreas Bechtler purchased the sculpture in 2006, and it was installed on the museum plaza in October 2009. After four days of conservation, it was unveiled to the public on November 3, 2009, and became a permanent part of the collection. The sculpture was illuminated in January 2015 to mark the museum's fifth anniversary. Inside the building, the 23-foot mural Wall Drawing 995 by Sol LeWitt, installed in October 2009, is on long-term loan from the artist's estate.

The museum building was designed by Swiss architect Mario Botta and contains four floors. Its exterior features a terracotta-tiled cubic form and a 47-foot weight-bearing column. The dominant external feature is the cantilevered fourth-floor gallery, half of which extends as an overhang from the building's core, supported by a column rising from the plaza below. A glass atrium in the multi-story foyer scales the museum's face, diffusing natural light throughout the interior. Inside, Botta employed steel, glass, terra cotta, black granite, polished concrete, and wood. He also designed select furnishings for the museum, including the reception desk, café bar, gallery benches, and hanging globe lights. The museum is located within the Levine Center for the Arts in Uptown Charlotte.