For over thirty years Hiroshi Sugimoto (born Tokyo 1948, based in the USA since 1970) has been making thoroughly fascinating, enigmatic photographs. They free photography from its commitment to reality, and locate it within an artistic reflection on time, transcience and memory. The spirituality of the Buddhist religion and Japanese aesthetics are just as influential on his work as the ideas of Marcel Duchamp and the experience of American minimal and conceptual art. The artist has designed the exhibition specially for the local conditions of the Museum of Art Lucerne. It constitutes his largest retrospective in Europa so far, and includes 70 works from all his important series.

The traditional annual exhibition shows current works by artists from Central Switzerland. The selection is made by a specialist jury on the basis of documents supplied by the artists wishing to participate.

Urs Luthi (b. 1947 in Kriens). now based in Munich, is one of the most significant Swiss artists of the present day. The retrospective will provide the most extensive survey of his work so far. Alongside his little-known early work from the 1960s, his famous photographic self-portraits, painting cycles and most recent sculptures will be shown. Ldthi is a gifted draughtsman. printmaker. painter and sculptor, as well as a narrator and stager of big stories and small emotions. This dialectic of farm and content, which guides the viewer into an experience that is both aesthetic and intellectual, informs his whole oeuvre.

The Manor Art Prize, founded in Lucerne in 1982, is considered to he one of the most important and prestigious instruments of private art sponsorship in Switzerland. Every two years a young, amhitious regional artist receives the award. This year the choice went to the painter Giacomo Santiago Rogado (b. 197°, in Lucerne), who considers the temporal aspect of perception in his exhibition first second patience. His work is dominated by geometrical forms, linear boundaries and an almost mathematically determined palette, which in their dynamic interplay not only develop a spatial depth but practically draw the viewer into the picture.

The Museum of Art owns a small but significant group of works featuring panel-paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries, Most of the works come from sacred and profane buildings in the near vicinity, which have been converted, altered or demolished over the course of the centuries. The works, torn from their original context, now serve as relics of an overall artistic and architectural concept. Using documents and reconstructions, the exhibition conveys their historical connections.

In the exhibition at Museum of Art Lucerne Fumetto serves up three delicacies: the big star of the Japanese comic scene Yuichi Yakoyama wit[ he shown for the first time in Europe with his action-packed merges and also with his painting. David Shrigley hardly needs an introduction in the art context. With his crude lines he will direct a seemingly succint eye upon a seemingly absurd world. Finally, the Geneva artistic duo Helge Reumann and Xavier Robe[ alias Elvis Studio will present their latest 'Wimmelbilder.

For the 100th birthday of the artist, as famous as he is ostracised. in the summer of 2009 Museum of Art Lucerne is showing the most extensive Hans Erni exhibition ever seen. In a selection of around 250 works it presents both familiar and surprising aspects of an extremely rich oeuvre produced over a period of eighty years. One of the highlights will he the 90-metre long mural 'Switzerland-holiday country of the nations'. which Erni produced for the national exhibition in 1939, and which will now he seen in larger interconnecting representative sections for the first time since 1939.

A great deal of room will also be given to the artist's early work. At the beginning of the 1930s Erni was in Paris, at the forefront of developments in abstract art, and in 1935 brought many of the international avant-garde artists to Lucerne for the remarkable exhibition 'Thesis, Antithesis. Synthesis'. Subsequently he further developed his abstract art into representational realism and merged the two expressive forms. In the exhibition this process will be made most excitingly apparent in an unparalleled sequence of paintings from 1933 until 1942.

Hans Erni's self-image follows a highly humanistic artistic tradition. His interests, his areas of activity, his themes, his media are correspondingly diverse. What remains is an impressive socially and environmentally political commitment, behind which the artist stands as an ever-alert and critical contemporary. This may he seen in numerous poster designs, which will also be prominently represented in the exhibition.

The thematic presentation of the collection brings together works distinguished by an element of silence. They are paintings, sculptures, photographs. videos and installations which refer in both their form and content to peace, and create a meditative effect. Reflection an the here and now accompanies visitors through the presentation of more recent groups of contemporary works from Ugo Rondinone or Berlinde de Bruyckere in alternation with older paintings by Robert Nod, Ferdinand Hodler and Pans Emmenegger.

Nom Borealis (2000) takes the museum audience along on an Arctic journey to the barely known world of the 'Aurora Borealis', the phenomenon of the Northern Lights, which can he observed on certain nights beyond the Arctic Circle. In a multimedia installation The French Artist Jean-Baptiste Barribre combines abstract video images with a newly mixed B-track recording of the instrumental piece 'Lichtbogen' by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho and authentic sound documents by the Finnish scientist Unto K. Laine. With dazzlingly beautiful sounds and images. Nox Borealis communicates a mysterious cosmic experience.

She-rabbits, little girls. female 'idiots', cockroaches. Fuseli's three witches -Maria Fevre has assembled a motley but quick-witted troop to develop mysterious stories in her paintings. played out between car parks and Brothers-Grimm fairy-tale forests. The artist, born in French-speaking Switzerland in 1959, started painting in Paris after an initial career in the theatre, and has lived in Berlin since 1999. This is her first sofa exhibition in Switzerland.

In a cabinet exhibition recent works by the video artist Judith Albert (b. 1969 in Sarnen) will be presented. Although she is entirely devoted to the moving image, her videos are hardly distinguished by major events. Instead they reveal a delicate observer of the inconspicuous moment. The videos derive their excitement from the slowness of observation. Reality is condensed into a poetic mood picture. in Switzerland.

The traditional annual exhibition shows current works by artists from Central Switzerland. The selection of the positions exhibited is made on the basis of documentation provided by the applying artists.
In a cabinet Irene Bisang will show her latest works. Irene Bisang has received the Exhibition Prize of the Lucerne Art Society.

Das Hans Erni-Museum auf dem Gelände des Verkehrshauses der Schweiz in Luzern zeigt auf mehreren Etagen mit über 300 Werken einen Querschnitt durch das umfassende Werk des renommierten Schweizer Malers, Grafikers und Plastikers. Der transparente Bau ist Sitz und lebendiges Zentrum der Hans Erni-Stiftung, die zum 70. Geburtstag des Künstlers 1979 gegründet wurde. Der Zweck der Stiftung besteht darin, das thematisch vielfältige Schaffen Hans Ernis einer breiten Öffentlichkeit zugänglich zu machen - an einem Ort, der gleichzeitig eine Stätte kultureller Begegnung ist. Die Ausstellung führt Ernis zentrales Anliegen, das sein gesamtes Schaffen prägt, deutlich vor Augen: Er will unsere durch Wissenschaft und Technik vielfach verfremdete Welt über die künstlerische Interpretation begreiflicher machen.

Die Schenkung der mit Picasso befreundeten Familie Rosengart an die Stadt Luzern, anlässlich ihres 800-Jahr-Jubiläums 1978, umfasst eine Reihe grossformatiger Gemälde und eine Eisenblech-Skulptur, sowie Gouachen, Handzeichnungen, Keramiken und Originalgrafiken, und ist heute eine der weltweit wichtigsten Sammlungen von Spätwerken Pablo Picassos (1881-1973).

Seit 1992 beherbergt das Picasso-Museum auch die Ausstellung "Picasso, fotografiert von David Douglas Duncan". Als einziges Museum der Welt kann es diese Sammlung sehr persönlicher Fotografien des berühmten amerikanischen Fotografen zeigen. Die rund 200 meisterhaften Aufnahmen geben aus nächster Nähe Einblick ins Leben Picassos und vermögen dem noch Suchenden eine Tür zu dessen Spätwerken zu öffnen.

Untergebracht ist die Picasso Sammlung im Am-Rhyn-Haus, einem der schönsten historischen Gebäude der Stadt, das 1616-18 von Schultheiss Walthard Am-Rhyn, anschliessend an das Rathaus, im Renaissance-Stil erbaut wurde und 1946 in den Besitz der Stadt Luzern überging.

The Rosengart Collection was originally the private art collection of father-and-daughter Siegfried and Angela Rosengart. The collection has never previously been made available to the public in its entirety, though individual works have been regularly lent to major exhibitions.

The Collection comprises well over 200 works by 23 different “Classic Modernist” artists. These include 125 works by Paul Klee and some 50 by Pablo Picasso. Other artists represented include (in alphabetical order) Bonnard, Braque, Cézanne, Chagall, Dufy, Kandinsky, Laurens, Léger, Marini, Matisse, Miró, Modigliani, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Rouault, Seurat, Signac, Soutine, Utrillo and Vuillard.

10. März bis 6. Mai 2007
Nils Nova
Der Luzerner Künstler Nils Nova zeigt seine neuesten Arbeiten im Museum im Bellpark. Seine raumgreifenden Installationen verändern das Museum und machen die Räumlichkeiten des Museums neu erfahrbar. Nils Nova (*1970) lebt und arbeitet in Luzern.

26. Mai bis 8. Juli 2007
Fernschau
Die Fotografie diente um 1900 als Instrument, um den Leuten die Welt im Bild näher zu bringen. Ein Aargauer Verein sammelte Fotografien aus aller Welt und machte diese der intere- ssierten Öffentlichkeit in einem "Fotomuseum" zugänglich. Die Absicht war, Gewerbetreibende, die im Export- geschäft tätig waren, auf die neuen Märkte vorzu- bereiten. Dieser wunderbare Bestand an alten Fotografien wird vom Forum Schlossplatz aufgear- beitet und in einer Ausstellung Ende 2006 zu- gänglich gemacht. Das Museum im Bellpark über- nimmt die Ausstellung und zeigt das Material in der Zentralschweiz. Zur Ausstellung erscheint eine Publikation im Verlag "hier + jetzt".

18. August bis 11. November 2007
Eduard Spelterini: Pionier
der Flugfotografie
Eduard Spelterini ist einer der bedeutendsten Ballonfahrer und gleichzeitig ein wichtiger Pionier der Luftbildfotografie. Die Ausstellung stellt Spelterini als Fotografen vor und würdigt sein Werk. Die Ausstellung zeigt Bestände aus dem Verkehrshaus Luzern, das die noch erhaltenen Ne- gative des Fotografen besitzt. Die Ausstellung ist insofern eine Zusammenarbeit zwischen Museum im Bellpark und Verkehrshaus der Schweiz. Der Zürcher Verlag Scheidegger und Spiess veröffent- licht eine Publikation über das fotografische Schaffen von Spelterini.