A New Museum Is Opening in Basel, Switzerland This Summer With a Blowout Show of Caribbean Art

In June 2020, the city of Basel,
Switzerland will welcome the addition of yet another contemporary
art space to its cultural landscape with the opening of the
Kulturstiftung Basel H.Geiger (KBHG). 

Due to be unveiled during the
week of the Art Basel fair, the new venue—housed in a former
factory in the city center—will be overseen by director Raphael
Suter, and is being billed as a permanent forum for year-long,
temporary exhibitions. To sweeten the deal, all visitors will enjoy
free entry and complimentary catalogues.

For its inaugural presentation,
KBHG has teamed up with the Caribbean Art Initiative (CAI), a
newly-founded independent nonprofit that aims to bring Caribbean
art and culture to a global audience. The debut exhibition will be
curated by Yina Jiménez Suriel and Pablo Guardiola, who were
selected via an open call, and whose participation marks CAI’s
first partnership with outside curators. 

Since 2018, Suriel has held a
curatorial position at Centro León in the Dominican Republic.
Guardiola, who is an artist as well as a curator, co-directs
Beta-Local in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Working in collaboration with
CAI’s curatorial advisors, Suriel and Guardiola will organize a
group exhibition comprised of new and existing works by
yet-to-be-announced artists from across the Caribbean. In
particular, the show aims to highlight the contemporary political
and geographical changes of the region.

The choice to stage a
Carribean-based exhibition in Basel during the world’s most famous
art fair is striking; the founders and curators are hoping to
engender a conversation about an otherwise overlooked facet of the
international art community.

In a statement, Albertine Kopp,
founder of the Caribbean Art Initiative, elaborated on the idea,
saying: “[Basel] is not only known as a global cultural hub but
also as a point of intersection for progressive ideas and global
networks. Our aim is to weave Caribbean artists from various parts
of the region more deeply into the unfolding international
narrative about art.”

‘We are hoping to bring new perspectives by providing a platform
for art that is not often otherwise shown in Basel,” Raphael Suter
told Artnet News. “We hope it will shine a light on what we
perceive as a still little-understood and under-appreciated segment
of the international art community, providing a snapshot of the
contemporary art scene in the region.”

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With a Blowout Show of Caribbean Art appeared first on artnet
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