Musée Jenisch

The Musée Jenisch is an art museum in Vevey, in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland. Inaugurated on 10 March 1897, it is the second largest art museum in the canton. The institution specializes in works on paper, particularly drawings, engravings, and prints, while also maintaining significant collections of paintings from the 16th century to the present. It houses the Oskar Kokoschka Foundation and the Cabinet cantonal des estampes, making it a major center for graphic arts in Switzerland.

The museum was established through a legacy of 200,000 gold francs from Fanny Henriette Jenisch (1801-1881), widow of Martin Johann Jenisch, a senator of Hamburg. She donated the funds to the city of Vevey in gratitude for the many holidays she and her husband had spent there. The building was designed in the neoclassical style by architects Louis Henri Maillard and Robert Convert and inaugurated in March 1897. For nearly a century, the museum also housed natural history collections and a public library, including numerous stuffed animals, before these were transferred to the Zoological Museum in Lausanne in the 1980s. In 1989, the museum welcomed the Oskar Kokoschka Foundation and the Cabinet cantonal des estampes. A major renovation and expansion took place from 2009 to 2012, carried out by the Lausanne architecture firm Bakker & Blanc, and the museum reopened in June 2012. Under director Bernard Blatter (1983-2004), the museum was freed from its natural history collections to focus entirely on fine arts. His successor Dominique Radrizzani (2004-2012) emphasized drawing, negotiated the deposit of the Balthus Foundation, established a Cobra collection, and opened the programming to contemporary art. Julie Enckell Julliard directed the museum from May 2013 to the end of 2017.

The museum's collections are overwhelmingly focused on works on paper, which constitute more than 95 percent of its holdings. These comprise approximately 9,500 drawings, 35,000 prints, and 1,300 paintings. The Cabinet cantonal des estampes, established in Vevey in 1989, unites more than 30,000 works and ranks among the five most prestigious print collections in Switzerland. It incorporates collections from the canton of Vaud, the William Cuendet & Atelier de Saint-Prex Foundation, the Pierre Decker print fund, the Alexis Forel Museum association, the Pierre Aubert Foundation, and the Planque Foundation. The Oskar Kokoschka Foundation, deposited in 1989, holds the world's most important collection of graphic works by the Austrian expressionist, including nearly 1,200 prints and several hundred drawings. In 2007, an anonymous collector bequeathed 400 French and Italian drawings from the 18th century. In 2014, Rudolf Schindler donated 632 drawings by Ferdinand Hodler. The museum also holds the national Centre of Drawings, established in 2004, which brings together more than 5,000 modern and old master drawings.

The museum's collections span from the Renaissance to contemporary art and include works by major artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Canaletto, Jean-Baptiste Corot, Claude Lorrain, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Francisco Goya, Edgar Degas, Pierre Bonnard, Agostino Carracci, Hendrick Goltzius, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Giambattista Tiepolo, Paolo Veronese, Federico Zuccari, Isaac van Ostade, François Bocion, Gustave Courbet, Ferdinand Hodler, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Giorgio Morandi, Pierre Alechinsky, and Balthus. The first work acquired by the museum was a Port d'Ouchy by François Bocion, obtained through public subscription. The Kokoschka Foundation holds over 800 original prints by the artist, who died in Villeneuve on Lake Geneva in 1980. The museum also administers collections from the Nestlé collection, the Lélo Fiaux Foundation, the Wilhelm Gimmi Foundation, and the Friends of the Museum Foundation, which donated its entire collection to the museum in 2019.

The museum building is a neoclassical structure located at Avenue de la Gare 2 in Vevey. Its pediment is adorned with a replica of the Pantheon tympanum, Prospetto del Panteon supplito de suoi ornamenti. The entrance hall and main staircase feature mosaic floors, antique-style columns, and statuettes characteristic of the period. The 2009-2012 renovation by Bakker & Blanc sought to recover the aesthetic of the original museum by restoring the mosaic floors, the wall colors of the hall, and frescoes by Swiss painter Ernest Biéler in the entrance hall, while modernizing the exhibition spaces. The renovation aimed to achieve a symbiosis between past and modernity. The ground floor now hosts three temporary exhibitions annually, while the upper floor is reserved for the museum's special treasures, including the Oskar Kokoschka Foundation space with its prints, and collections of historical paintings. The museum also features a dedicated space for engraved art, the Pavillon de l'estampe.

The Musée Jenisch is located at Avenue de la Gare 2, 1800 Vevey, Switzerland, approximately 250 meters from the Vevey CFF railway station. The museum is fully accessible for people with reduced mobility and strollers, with a ramp at the rear of the building on the Rue des Communaux side. Since its 2012 reopening, the museum presents three temporary exhibitions per year on the ground floor: one dedicated to a mid-career young artist, one international exhibition, and one thematic show. The upper floor displays historical collections of paintings from the 16th century to the present, the Kokoschka Foundation space, and regularly rehung selections from the engraving and drawing collections. The museum is owned and operated by the city of Vevey and holds national museum status, having been elevated to this category by the Swiss national museum reorganization body. It is currently directed and managed by women, and positions itself as a dynamic and inclusive institution offering innovative mediation activities.