Unopened Portfolios Lift Swiss Museum Gift From 150 to 218 Works

A Swiss museum thought it was getting 150 artworks. It got 218.

Philippe Bodenmann has given his entire collection to the Musée des beaux-arts de La Chaux-de-Fonds in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, and the full size only became clear after closed portfolios at his home were opened and listed, The Art Newspaper reported.

The first number was a count of what could be seen on display at the collector's premises. The second number came after an inventory, the formal documented listing of each object, once those unopened portfolios were unpacked.

That gap explains some earlier confusion. Local coverage in May described the gift as 150 works to be shown in the museum's large collections hang as part of Capitale culturelle, the town's cultural capital programme, ArcInfo reported. A later local report put the figure at 200 new works, ArcInfo reported. The September inventory of 218 works is the authoritative count.

Museum director David Lemaire oversees a collection that has changed shape because of the gift. Before the donation, the museum owned no works by Joseph Kosuth. It now holds several, alongside works by Lawrence Weiner and paintings by Max Bill.

Bodenmann placed no conditions on the gift. That means no rules on display, storage or future loans, leaving those decisions to the museum.

The project was first announced to political authorities in 2025. It is now on public view in its entirety for the first time in the exhibition Voyages en zigzag: La collection de Philippe Bodenmann.

The show runs until 3 January 2027.

What makes this stand out is the ordinariness of the surprise. Collectors often keep prints and drawings in portfolios, the flat cases used to store works on paper, and some are never opened for years. Here, those closed cases held 68 extra works.