In Switzerland it is now almost legendary: the press conference in mid-December, with which the Kunsthaus Zürich wanted to free itself from all the allegations, attacks and embarrassments surrounding the historically burdened Emil Bührle art collection. For a few months now, around 200 works from the arms dealer’s previous possession have been on loan from his foundation in the extension of the Kunsthaus. So far, however, neither the Kunsthaus nor the Foundation have been able to dispel the suspicion that Nazi-looted art is among the pictures.
That didn’t work at the press conference either. The attempt at liberation turned into a difficult justification event. With dramatic consequences: at the end of December, the Basel-born Jewish artist Miriam Cahn made publicthat she wanted to withdraw her pictures from the Kunsthaus. She criticized statements made by the President of the Bührle Foundation, Alexander Jolles, as being anti-Semitic and in an open letter questioned the way in which Bührle had become rich, among other things, by selling weapons to Nazi Germany. “Buying art doesn’t wash white! Collecting art doesn’t make you a better person.” According to the Jewish weekly magazine Tachles Cahn’s gallery owners are already negotiating with the Kunsthaus to buy back their works.
The early replacement of the Kunsthaus director is already being discussed
And that is not the only consequence of the unsuccessful media event. Still-Kunsthaus director Christoph Becker said, among other things, that he had exchanged ideas with several experts about the documentation room belonging to the Bührle works (and also sharply criticized) – including with Ronald Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress. However, he left it on New Years in the NZZ on Sunday deny: He was not consulted by the Kunsthaus and made no statement about the documentation room. When asked by the newspaper, the Kunsthaus admits that Lauder was only in Zurich in 2016 for a lecture at which the Bührle Collection was also discussed.
Now Zurich’s mayor or, as it is called in Switzerland, city president Corine Mauch is noticeably keeping a distance from the Kunsthaus and its director. In one NZZ-Interview she brings Becker’s premature replacement by his designated successor into play and urges the publication of the loan agreement between the Kunsthaus and the Bührle Foundation. This is remarkable insofar as Mauch is not an uninvolved person in the Bührle case. As city representative, she is on the one hand an important financier of the Kunsthaus, on the other hand Mauch is also on the board of the Kunstgesellschaft, the sponsoring association of the Kunsthaus. However, Mauch hardly addresses his own mistakes in the Bührle case in the interview.