Verso: Tales from the Other Side

Curator: Bodo Brinkmann

The exhibition explores what is concealed on the reverse sides of paintings dating from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Thirty-six works from the museum’s collection are displayed in specially designed frames that, for the first time, allow visitors to view both sides of the paintings.

“Verso” presents views typically reserved for museum staff, revealing overlooked or hidden social, political, and religious contexts in which the works were originally used. The exhibition offers new perspectives on even the most familiar pieces.

In the galleries on the underground level of the Kunstmuseum Basel | Neubau, eight thematic sections guide visitors through a wide range of observations. Most of the two-sided paintings in the collection were originally part of Catholic altar wings. Accordingly, the exhibition opens with two sixteenth-century altarpieces preserved in their entirety, offering insight into their liturgical function.