Kirchner Museum Davos

The Kirchner Museum Davos is an art museum in Davos, Switzerland, dedicated to the life and work of the German Expressionist artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Kirchner lived in Davos from 1918 to 1938, and the alpine environment profoundly inspired a large number of his important works. The museum displays his art at the site of its creation, offering a direct connection between the artwork and the landscape that shaped his late oeuvre.

The museum was founded in 1982, initially housed in the old post office building in Davos Platz. The Swiss art collector and dealer Eberhard W. Kornfeld, who had acquired Kirchner's final house on Wildboden in Frauenkirch near Davos in the 1960s and opened his Kirchner collection to the public on weekends, was instrumental in its establishment. On September 4, 1992, a new building donated by Kirchner's estate administrator, Roman Norbert Ketterer, was opened. At its inauguration, 500 works and 160 sketchbooks with almost 10,000 drawings were donated from the artist's estate, adding to an existing collection of 519 works. In 1994, another 700 works and numerous surviving negatives of Kirchner's photographs were added. After renovation work, the museum celebrated its 30th anniversary in December 2012 with the exhibition Thirty Years of the Kirchner Museum Davos: The Collection. In 2016 and 2017, the museum was one of ten Swiss institutions to receive federal financial support for provenance research. Around 80 works whose origin is not fully documented, including pieces by Kirchner, Alexej von Jawlensky, and Wassily Kandinsky, were selected for review regarding Nazi-looted art. In November 2024, voters rejected a proposal for the city of Davos to invest $4.4 million in a $12.7 million museum extension. Following the vote, German fashion entrepreneur Uwe Holy decided against donating the Ulmberg collection, which comprises around 100 works by Kirchner and contemporaries such as Max Beckmann, Emil Nolde, and Lyonel Feininger, as well as post-war artists like Francis Bacon, Pierre Soulages, and Louise Bourgeois.

The collection encompasses numerous paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and textile works, as well as almost all of the artist's sketchbooks and photographs. All important themes in Kirchner's oeuvre are represented, including studio, nude, and circus scenes, portraits, and figure and landscape paintings from his Die Brucke period through his Swiss late work. The majority of the holdings date from his Davos period, reflecting his constant preoccupation with the mountain world and his connection to its inhabitants. The museum also houses numerous documents on the artist's life and work, alongside a library on Expressionism. A catalog raisonne of 160 sketchbooks was published in 1996 by Gerd Presler, and these sketchbooks are now made accessible through complete digitization.

While the museum does not highlight a single signature painting, the most notable holdings are the comprehensive groups of materials from the artist's estate. The 160 sketchbooks containing almost 10,000 drawings form a core component, supplemented by the surviving negatives of Kirchner's photographs. The collection's depth is further defined by the 500 works donated upon the 1992 building inauguration and the 700 works added in 1994, which collectively represent the most substantial concentration of his Davos period output.

The current museum building was the first major commission for Zurich architects Annette Gigon and Mike Guyer. It is regarded as a pioneering work in museum architecture for combining functionality and aesthetics, architectural intrinsic value, and service to art. Based on regional climate, light conditions, and Davos flat roof architecture, the architects designed four cubes as exhibition halls. These are connected by a branched foyer with wide window fronts, intended as a place for reflection that opens up a view of the alpine landscape that inspired Kirchner. The facade is completely covered with glass, alternating opaque and clear elements, and the roof, termed the fifth facade, is covered with broken glass. In addition to exhibition rooms and the connecting access hall, the building contains didactic rooms, a library, a meeting room, offices, workshops, depots, and ancillary rooms. The building received the Daylight Award from the Velux Foundation in 2012, the most valuable architecture prize in Switzerland, and was selected in 2019 by Bunder Heimatschutz as one of the 52 best buildings in Graubunden from 1950 to 2000.

The Kirchner Museum Davos is located in Davos, Switzerland. The Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Foundation Davos owns both the collection and the museum building. The museum is supported by the Kirchner Association Davos, founded in 1982, which has around 600 members and institutions. The association promotes the museum's content-related work, actively supports the acquisition of artworks, and funds museum educational activities and research publications. A patronage committee of notable personalities also provides ideological and financial support. To reach a broad audience, the museum offers guided tours, workshops for children, youth, schoolchildren, and adults, and hikes following in Kirchner's footsteps to the Stafelalp or to his grave in the Davos forest cemetery. The annual World Economic Forum in Davos increases the museum's worldwide visibility. The museum is currently directed by art historian Katharina Beisiegel, who assumed the role in September 2021.