Ghosts seem to be everywhere. Visual culture teems with spectres, from Hollywood blockbusters like “Ghostbusters” (1984) to indie films such as “All of Us Strangers” (2023). They haunt screens, theater stages, and pages: literature, folklore, and myth are saturated with spirits that refuse to leave us in peace. They have also always haunted art. As entities of the in-between, ghosts are mediators between worlds, between above and below, life and death, horror and humor, good and evil, visible and invisible. Any attempt to depict, record, or communicate with them thus offers a conceptual challenge and an emotional thrill.
This fall and winter, the Kunstmuseum Basel dedicates an extensive exhibition to these unfathomable entities. With over 160 works and objects created during the past 250 years, “Ghosts. Visualizing the Supernatural” explores the rich visual culture associated with ghosts that took shape in the Western hemisphere in the 19th century, when science, spiritualism, and popular media began to intersect in new ways, inspiring art and artists ever since. Even today, hundreds of millions of people all over the world believe in ghosts. The fact that such manifestations interact continually with our collective imagination—our cultural unconscious, even—is what makes the ghost such a powerful and enduring figure and the exhibition a surprising, fun, and thought-provoking journey.
On this evening, there will be an English-language guided tour of the exhibit with the exhibition's curator, Eva Reifert.
Cost is CHF 7 plus admission to the museum.

Website
kunstmuseumbasel.ch/en/exhibitions/2025/ghosts

Where
Kunstmuseum Basel
St. Alban-Graben 16
4051 Basel

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