Our art & culture loop through south-central Europe, with previous visits to Asti, Torino, Milan, and Venice continued with a stop at Zurich Art Weekend, on our way to ArtBasel.

What and When is Zurich Art Weekend ?

Zurich Art Weekend is an annual special arts program / event organized by several of the museums and other heavy-hitters in Zurich, Switzerland, and typically mounted the first full weekend in June. For 2024, there were some 65 official participating venues: museums, galleries, publishing houses, private foundations and more, hosting 75+ exhibitions.

The even begins on Friday and runs through Sunday evening, with most venues open extended hours (many until 10pm!), particularly on Friday and Saturday. Some may also be open on Monday.

From speaking with attendees and gallerists, if you want the energy of full attendance, make sure you have Friday afternoon / evening on the calendar!

Unfortunately, we didn’t arrive until mid-day on Saturday. After checking in, we did take full advantage of the late closing hour(s) at many of the spaces.  In around 3 hours, we managed to visit around 15 spaces. Some of them were not on the “official” map, but we had either mapped ourselves prior or simply noted were open when we walked by.

Too Much to see?

As we said, the official count is more than 75+ exhibitions. There was also a full slate of artist talks, performances and theatre – more than we could take in over 3 days.

There are many more non-participating galleries and independent, artist-run spaces in Zurich, so plan your time accordingly.

This is the slightly maddening thing about the event: the organizers publish an official map, which does NOT include all those listed by Google (and vice-versa). And there’s ALSO a map of over 40 independent spaces, called the Zurich ArtSpace Guide (below, middle). SOME of these were included as official Art Weekend locations, but not all. We thought about doing the work to combine the two (or three) for you, but participation is fluid and changes year to year. As we always say, you’ll just need to do some research first.

On the official Zurich Art Weekend map, (left image, above) there are two fairly dense clusters which should be starting points for you. The first is centered along the “bottom” of the historic Old Town, at the top end of the lake.  These venues are all within a 15 or so minute walk of each other. We’d suggest allowing 3-4 hours, plus lunch/dinner.

The second major cluster is even more dense, as it’s centered at the Lowenbraukunst, a former Lowenbrau brewery  that was converted to an arts & culture hub in the 90’s.  This complex has over a dozen art galleries, museums, and a restaurant. For Zurich Art Weekend, the hours are extended, (including being open on Monday, for 2024) and the museums were free!  Allow 3+ hours for this cluster, (more if you want to sit for Artist Talks, etc.), but note there are other nearby galleries and restaurants to visit as well.

The Art Weekend Zurich website also has pre-curated routes for you to follow. If you spend the time overlaying the them against the various maps, you should find other areas dense with galleries, studios and spaces to more than fill another day, not including additional museums, like Kunsthaus Zurich, the largest art museum in Switzerland.

Oh, and if you like street art, check this guy’s site; he’s got those clusters laid out pretty well.

Art you can expect to see

We’re sure that the programming changes each year, but in our 2 days we saw only contemporary art, by artists 18 to 80+ years of age.  Well, except for a couple galleries which featured dead blue-chip artists like Calder, Rothko, Louise Bourgeois, etc.

Paintings were dominant, though there were some installations and sculpture. We did notice that we recognized several artists whom we’d just seen in Venice or our recent stops in Turin / Milan.  

Gallery spaces ranged from cramped spaces in historic buildings to revamped industrial. The historic spaces tended to have lots of stairs. Or maybe I was just tired. I know I’m getting older.

Google says Old Town to Lowenbraukunst is about a 40-minute walk, but we took a couple hours, visiting other galleries, public sculpture and neighborhoods along the way. We passed through what was clearly a student / backpacker area, ritzy shopping district, a quiet middle-class residential area (with a great park), and quite a bit of riverfront. 

Getting To & Around Zurich

Zurich has an international airport, so you can obviously fly in from wherever you might be. Do note that while Switzerland is not part of the EU, it is part of the 90-out-of-180-days Schengen Zone, so make sure you have sufficient time remaining if you’re coming from Italy, France, etc. (you can use this calculator).

We took the train up from Milan, where we’d spent a couple days after the Venice Biennale.  We chose a direct train, which took a little over 4 hours and cost around 45EUR each. It’s a pretty trip, and if you’ve got the time, you could add in stops in Lake Como and/or Lugano.

We arrived in the heart of historic Zurich and had a 15 minute walk to our AirBnB.

As you’d expect in Switzerland, public transport (electric trams) is widely available and efficient.  Zurich seems to be a fairly compact city.  Since it was our first time, we walked, in order to more fully explore.  Sometimes you run across great art you would miss on public transport. 

As in Venice, there are public drinking fountains all over town.  But the fountains in Zurich are much more interesting and artistic. Here’s a sample of some we found.

Bonus events

Just one of our worthwhile discoveries on that walk was the EspanOle Fest, billed as a two-day Streetfood Festival.  There appeared to be over 40 food booths, including a row of 12 or more JUST serving Paella – we assume some competition was to be held. But we arrived around 11 am, and most were still just setting up for the day. We’d have loved to stick around for paella,  the free Gallicia beer tasting, or the performances, but we really needed to press on. 

On our walk back from the Lowenbraukunst cluster to Old Town, we lucked into the heart of Food Zurich, a 10-day culinary festival spread across the city.  This section felt a little like the European Christmas markets we’d experienced before, except we had rain instead of snow.  The big beer & wine tent was a welcome shelter as we enjoyed a pulled-mushroom shawarma (!) and sat out the worst of the storm.

Where to Stay

We had arranged an AirBnB in Old Town.  Supremely located only about 20 meters from the river, it was super-convenient to a Lidl supermarket, restaurants, shopping, and two bridges for crossing the Limmat River, which runs through the middle of Zurich.

A note of caution before choosing this area: the Swiss have a reputation as expert clock-makers, and indeed, there are clocks and belltowers all over downtown.  Pretty. Picturesque!  And incredibly loud when trying to sleep.  (It’s not just us) We’d actually recommend looking at hotels, which we assume have better soundproofing.  There’s a Marriott on the eastern bank that seems pretty well-situated.

Francs, not Euros!

A note about money, since I mentioned Euros, above. Switzerland uses the Swiss Franc (CHF), not the Euro, though we understand Euros are widely accepted. You will be charged according to the daily exchange rate (currently 1CHF = 1.09Euro) and given change in Francs. We’ve been here 3 days and have not used any currency or coin. (We spend almost 2 weeks in London back in March and never exchanged currency either). Mastercard & Visa are widely accepted, though we have seen some food stalls that are cash only.

Limmat River

About that river.  It’s lovely, and actually used as the worlds-largest (?) pool by residents; there are sections for floating, for swimming, for sunbathing. There are a couple nice little restaurants/bars, and some ever-changing street art sections, especially on the east bank.  We highly recommend a stroll along the bank(s) and the park on the island in the middle.  And a swim, if you’re game!