Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The Museum of Contemporary Art Fernet-Branca occupies the premises of a former distillery built in 1907-1909 in Saint-Louis, near Basel, for the Branca family of Milan. Designed by architect G. Merlini and built by Broggi and Appiani, this 50-metre-long plant produced a bitter liqueur, the Fernet-Branca, invented by Dr Fernet and industrialized by Bernardino Branca. The cellars housed giant oak barrels, made on site by the Strasbourg cooper Rodolphe Fruhinsholz, to age up to 300,000 bottles annually. Production ceased on 22 July 2000, marking the end of a Ludovician industrial era.

The reconversion of the site into a cultural space emerged in February 2003, carried by Jean Ueberschlag (mayor) and architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte, who were commissioned to revitalize Saint-Louis. The project is part of a rich cross-border network, alongside the Beyeler Foundation or the Vitra Design Museum. Inaugurated in 2004 as a museum, the site became a public utility foundation in 2011, highlighting its original industrial volumes: a central courtyard, rooms partitioned by white candles, and a lighting designed to enhance contemporary works. Ranked at the Monuments Historiques, the building retains its industrial soul while welcoming artists like Olivier Debré or Antoni Clavé.

The design, sober and elegant, preserves the traces of the past: natural light filtering from the courtyard, fluid circulations, and original materials (brick, metal). The foundation, led by Pierre-Jean Sugier since 2013, complements the local cultural offer (theatre La Coupole, media library Le Parnasse) and strengthens Saint-Louis' attractiveness in the trinational artistic ecosystem. His identity is based on this dialogue between worker memory and current creation, anchored in a territory marked by Franco-German-Swiss exchanges.

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