Basel’s Art Week Unfolds: From River Rhythms to Radical Nudes

Every June, Basel transforms into a living gallery, where art escapes the fairgrounds and spills into city streets, riversides, and historic halls. This year, the Parcours section turns Clarastraße into an open-air museum, with contemporary installations curated by Stefanie Hessler weaving along the Rhine. Inside Kunstmuseum Basel, a sweeping exhibition spotlights a century of Black portraiture, challenging who gets to be seen and how. At Hauser & Wirth, Vilhelm Hammershøi’s shadowy interiors invite quiet reflection, while Fondation Beyeler’s "Cloud Chronicles" reimagines the museum as a shifting, interactive ecosystem. Across town and in nearby Zürich, shows like Ebecho Muslimova’s irreverent paintings and Pedro Wirz’s shape-shifting sculptures push boundaries of form and material. Even the nude gets a modern twist at Galerie Henze & Ketterer, where fleeting poses and abstract bodies reveal the restless spirit of 20th-century art. Basel’s art week is less a checklist, more a citywide invitation to wander, wonder, and see the familiar anew. #ArtBasel2024 #BaselCulture #ContemporaryArt