Collection Highlights
Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich
Permanent Collection

When the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich draws from its rich collection, the Rex vegetable peeler is juxtaposed with a cocktail dress by Balenciaga, and Adrian Frutiger’s typeface Univers stands alongside Albrecht Dürer’s Apocalypse, while Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s avant-garde puppets dance around an SBB (Swiss Railways) station clock. In an associative presentation, the exhibition Collection Highlights shows relationships between objects from different eras and design disciplines. Thematic drawers and display cases feature examples from the museum’s collection, spanning over half a million objects from the decorative arts, graphic design, posters, textiles, furniture, and product design.

The 2000 highlights on display invite visitors to take an enjoyable journey through the history of design. The examples range from the founding of the decorative arts collection in 1875, when it served as a model collection for creative professions, up to the present day. Internationally renowned masterpieces are juxtaposed with anonymous designs and seemingly worthless things such as empty zwieback boxes.

A New Kind of Exhibition. The intuitive assemblage of objects presented in the open on the central exhibition island offers a completely new perspective on the collection. The associative display follows formal similarities such as coloration, textures, and stylistic elements spanning many different disciplines. Separated from their cultural-historical connections, objects with similar qualities are juxtaposed and unexpected relationships between them are revealed.

Discover Treasures. There are more treasures to discover in around 150 thematic display cases and drawers: individual arrangements examine particular phenomena such as glazes and contemporary design in ceramics. Other groupings follow specific materials such as aluminum and ivory, while display cases with shoes, protective goggles, cameras, and audio devices show the development of everyday products over time.

Design processes for logos and typefaces draw the viewer’s attention to typographic design, and visitors can explore the wide-ranging field of graphic design and photography with a selection of key objects and poster designs. Other groupings offer insight into the history of product packaging from the 1940s to the present and reveal facets of textile and fashion design.

more. www.museum-gestaltung.ch