Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Art museum in Solothurn, Switzerland.
Kunstmuseum Solothurn is an art museum in the Swiss city of Solothurn displaying works from the late Middle Ages to contemporary installations. The collection spans paintings, sculptures, and prints distributed across multiple floors.
The museum was founded in 1902 and originally displayed both artworks and natural history objects. In 1980 it was transformed into a dedicated art institution with its current focus.
The museum's collection grew through gifts from Solothurn collectors Oscar Miller, Josef Müller and Gertrud Dübi-Müller. The Dübi-Müller and Josef-Müller collections brought international works by Van Gogh, Klimt, Cézanne, Matisse, Degas, Renoir and Léger to the town. The museum continues to acquire Swiss contemporary art in coherent groups.
The museum stands in the town centre of Solothurn, and the former natural history rooms now hold the art galleries. In the garden around the building, exotic trees from the natural history period still stand, among them a sequoia. Visitors reach the collection on foot through the town's old quarter.
The museum garden still holds exotic trees from its natural-history era, including a sequoia. The natural-history section, with its mammoth teeth and ethnographic collection, closed in the 1970s and moved to a separate Naturmuseum, freeing the rooms for art. For the museum park Roman Signer made the kinetic fountain sculpture Stiefel (2004).
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