Museum Tinguely
The Museum Tinguely is an art museum in Basel, Switzerland, dedicated to the work of Swiss painter and sculptor Jean Tinguely (1925–1991). Designed by architect Mario Botta, it opened in 1996 on the banks of the Rhine. The museum holds the world’s largest collection of Tinguely’s works, ranging from early reliefs to large-scale kinetic sculptures. • Illustration — Museum Tinguely seen from across the Rhine, Basel • Illustration — Museum Tinguely exterior
Also recorded as Museum Jean Tinguely · Tinguely museum
Museum Tinguely
Alan Philip Müller from Milano, Italy · Tinguely Museum - Mario Botta - Basel (CH) · CC BY 2.0
- Founded
- 1996
- Headquarters
- Switzerland
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wikidata · Q180904 · wikipedia · Museum Tinguely
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Institutions cited
Bibliothèque nationale de France · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
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Exhibitions
Exhibitions
The museum also organizes temporary exhibitions that engage with other artists, including Tinguely’s contemporaries and modern practitioners. In 2023, the Museum Tinguely introduced a new exhibition titled La roue = c’est tout, which revisits Tinguely’s pioneering contributions to kinetic art. Upon entry, visitors encounter Éloge de la folie (1966), a large-scale relief originally created as a stage design for a ballet production in Paris. The piece had been stored in a private collection for two decades before being acquired by the museum. The exhibition also includes early Méta-Mécaniques, scrap-based machines from the 1960s, large Méta-Harmonies, and documentation of Tinguely’s collaborations with other artists. Also in 2023, the museum hosted The Last Reality Show, a conceptual installation by playwright Boris Nikitin. The work featured a replica of the living container used in the first season of the reality television show Big Brother. Originally created in 2020 for a theatre production in Germany, the installation was presented as a walk-through exhibit. The museum described the installation as a counterpart to Tinguely’s engagement with the relationship between humans and machines.
Gallery
Gallery
• Illustration — Gwendolyn (1966) by Niki de Saint Phalle, in Solitude Park • Illustration — Schwimmwasser-Plastik (1980) by Jean Tinguely, in Solitude Park • Illustration — Dickfigur Beteigeuze (1996) by Bernhard Luginbühl, outside Museum Tinguely
Documentary record
Museum Tinguely (established 1996) is an organisation documented in the authority records of the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. The founding of Museum Tinguely is dated 1996. The seat is recorded as Basel.
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- Switzerland
Collection
The museum’s permanent display includes Tinguely’s kinetic sculptures, together with illustrations, photographs, and archival materials related to his life and work. Shortly after the museum opened, Niki de Saint Phalle donated more than 50 works from Tinguely’s estate.
Text attribution
Licensing
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The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Museum Tinguely, revision 1367804955 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Museum Tinguely. Basel Tourismus.
- 2.Museum Tinguely. Kunstbulletin.
- 3.Jean Tinguely Centennial. Niki Charitable Art Foundation. 22 May 2025.
- 4.Das Museum Tinguely stellt den Hauskünstler wieder ins Zentrum. Swissinfo. 7 February 2023.
- 5.Museum Tinguely Basel spotlights ‘Big Brother’ living container. Swissinfo. 6 December 2023.
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Institutions
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