History of the Bali Collection

Bali: Island of the Gods

History of the Bali Collection

The Museum of Cultures (Museum der Kulturen) in Basel, Switzerland has one of the most important and scientifically best documented Bali collections in the world. "Bali: Island of the Gods," features over 250 artifacts, 30 textiles, and historical photographs.

History of the Bali Collection

The Museum of Cultures (Museum der Kulturen) in Basel, Switzerland has one of the most important and scientifically best documented Bali collections in the world. It consists of about 5000 objects, films, photographs, and recorded material from its own fieldwork as well as master photographs by renowned photographers.

Over 80 years ago, the systematic research into and documentation of Balinese culture by Basel ethnologists, began with Paul Wirz in 1919 with his studies on rice-cultivation and the death cult of the Hindu-Balinese. Over many years Wirz collected and documented the material culture of the "Island of the Gods", laying the foundation of the museum's main emphasis on Bali.

Since 1937, the collection has been supplemented and expanded by chemist and musicologist Ernst Schlager, and painter Theo Meier, an artist living in Bali, along with museum ethnologist Alfred Buhler's scientific collaboration. During the period of the 30s and 40s, textiles and watercolor paintings from Batuan gained particular importance, and as a result the museum has one of the most important collections worldwide.

Since 1972, Urs Ramseyer, former curator of the Southeast-Asian department, has worked at extending and continuously renewing the Basel Baliology which in the meantime has gained -- thanks to most diverse cultural relations with Bali -- a world-wide reputation, and especially the broad acceptance of the Balinese population.

In spite of the international importance of the collection, it has only been exhibited twice -- in 1955 (curated by A Buhler and E Schlager) and in 1983 (curated by Urs Ramseyer).

A Partnership between Basel and Bali

For many years, Indonesia, and especially Bali, have had a large and continuously expanding audience in Switzerland. The Basler Kulturschule in East Bali, which was awarded a UNESCO label and the Culltural Prize of Bali, has been supported and sustained by wide sections of the Basel population. For ten years, artists from Bali have come to Basel to live, work, and exhibit, invited by the museum and the Christoph-Merian-Stiftung in Basel. And not least, the Gamelan orchestras of the Music Academies of Basel and Freiburg in Breisgau have become an essential part of a lasting cultural exchange between Basel and Bali.

As a result of this lasting partnership between Basel and Bali, the Bali Collection has become the most important and comprehensive collection outside of Bali. Systematically collected and documented by internationally known specialists, it mediates an incomparable insight into history, religion and art of one of the world's great living cultures. Its particular artistic quality being that it is able to show how belief becomes art, and in doing so also takes into account the expressive works of simple people's art as well as the filigree works of courtly art.