Basel Museum Night 2007

Each year several Swiss cities sponsor a museum night where you can visit all the museums in the area for one price (20CHF) from 6pm-2am. There is a huge variety of museums to choose from in Basel (architecture, art, history, design, toys, etc.), but this year we decided to visit a few that we had never been to before. First up - the Music Museum. This museam features the history of many different instruments and is housed in the old city prison. You can see the evolution of many instruments over time including the recorder, flute, clarinet, saxaphone, pianos, organs, orchestral string instruments and traditional drums. Then it was off to the Cartoon and Caricature Muesum. Here they were featuring one artist in particular, Tomi Ungerer - sometimes a bit lude for my taste, but he certainly had panels that were fun to look at =) Just down the street was the Basel Contemporary Art Museum designed by the local, Prizker Prize winner architecure firm of Herzog & de Meuron. The high-light of the exhibit was the Sol LeWitt wall drawing (pictured above) - FYI: we also have a Sol LeWitt at the IMA in Indianapolis. Lastly we ventured off to the Paper Museum that operates using a paddle wheel from way-back-when. It's a delightful museum that allows you to participate in the paper making process, details the history of paper making, and features a fantastic gift shop packed full with a huge assortment of hand-made paper and paper products. We had a terrific time and hope to be able to participate next year too. Otherwise, we will use our new-found knowledge to direct our 2007 visitors to the best Basel has to offer. Check out the photos from Robert's new camera here.