Aargauer Kunsthaus, Art museum and cultural center in Aarau, Switzerland
The Aargauer Kunsthaus is an art museum in Aarau housing over 21,000 works spanning from 18th-century art to contemporary creation. The galleries display paintings, drawings, and other media that document artistic development in Switzerland across several centuries.
The museum was founded in the 1950s and officially opened in 1959, but emerged from an artistic movement that began in the 19th century. Its roots trace to an 1860 society created to support Swiss art, which laid the groundwork for today's institution.
The collection displays works by local and Swiss artists, ranging from historical painters to contemporary creators shown throughout the galleries. Visitors encounter names like Albert Anker and Arnold Böcklin alongside modern positions that document artistic practice across generations.
The 2003 extension by Herzog & de Meuron opens the museum to the city through a glazed foyer holding a café and a bookshop. Inside, a spiral staircase from the 1959 building is taken up again, linking old and new wings. The extension also added storage rooms, art-mediation rooms and a reference library.
Since 2017 the museum has used digital mediation formats, including augmented reality and video projects. In 2024 it worked with the Fantoche animation film festival on the exhibition Re-Mix, in which video artists animated selected works from the collection.
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