Busiest when it had no building
During the 1970–87 closure the museum averaged 10.2 shows a year in other venues, against 3.1 in 1944–69. 1980 has the most entries of any year: 16.
Exhibition archive · Anomalies agent
Home · X-RAY · Random Walk · Director 2127
Three cockpits
in the Kunklerbau.
How X-RAY, Random Walk and Director 2127 would work in the building on 8 October 2027, and what they could change.
Built on a working prototype: seven research agents questioned public sources about the museum, and their findings now run three live cockpits. Visits and impact figures below are simulations and are labelled as such.
01
The prototype is live
The three cockpits from the concept paper run as web pages: X-RAY, Random Walk and Director 2127. They read one shared archive, built by seven research agents: the six in the paper plus the Contradiction Agent.
The corpus is what is public today: the museum website, the exhibition archive back to 1944, the annual reports 2022–2025 and 24 outside sources, among them HLS, SRF, Tagblatt, ArtReview, Wikipedia and Wikidata. MuseumPlus and the annual reports since 1827 are not yet in it.
519exhibitions in the archive list, 1944–2026
2,375pictures catalogued from kunstmuseumsg.ch
121findings with sources, from seven agents
333stops in the Random Walk network, 123 with pictures
0–3%data coverage per decade before 1940: "0 known entries", not "0 entries"
Corpus
Website, exhibition list from 1944, annual reports, press, HLS. Next: the archive 1827–2023.
7 agents
Ruptures, collection vs. exhibitions, people, language, absences, anomalies, contradictions.
Knowledge graph
Findings with sources, coverage per decade, and "things we did not expect to find".
3 cockpits
A wall with a rail, a printed slip, a desk. One graph, three ways of knowing.
02
Things we did not expect to find
Real findings from the prototype, each traceable to its source in X-RAY. They show what the method can do before the archive is even opened.
It bought films of its own empty rooms
In 2025 the museum acquired 16 Super-8 films Roman Signer shot in 1982 inside the closed building.
Annual report 2025 · Collection vs. Exhibitions agent
The staircase beat the collection
Claudia Caviezel's "Glitch" counted 23,450 visitors in 2025, more than the permanent collection display (18,663).
Annual report 2025 · Anomalies agent
Three founding years
The jubilees of 1953 ("125 years") and 1977 ("150 years") point to 1828 and 1827; German Wikipedia says 1823. The museum's own 100th birthday in 1977 left no trace.
Exhibition archive · Contradiction Agent
The gender turn came first
Women's share of solo shows rose from 26% (2003–11) to parity in 2017–19 and 71% from 2023, before the change of director. Coded from artist names: medium confidence.
Exhibition pages · Ruptures agent
Textiles vanished for 30 years
Shown regularly 1959–1992 in a city built on embroidery, then almost absent until Hicks (2023), Caviezel (2025) and Schumann (2026).
Exhibition archive · Absences agent
Participation never reached the walls
The mission promises "partizipative Zugänge", yet the word appears 0 times in 185 exhibition texts.
Mission page, exhibition texts · Language agent
A 2007 show predicted the 2025 gifts
All four artists of "Trotzwurzeln lesen Kartenluft" entered the collection in 2024–25, mostly through the Tagwerker estate.
Exhibition archive, annual report 2025 · Collection agent
03
Three rooms, three ways of knowing
The paper asks for three different interfaces, not three versions of one search engine. Each needs its own physical form. Proposal
Recognise patterns
X-RAY: the museum as an organism
An eight-metre wall projection in an upper gallery. A brass handle runs on a rail below it, from 1827 at the left to 2027 at the right; moving it moves the period on the wall. Nine physical switches turn the layers on and off.
The coverage strip is printed permanently along the base of the wall, so the gaps in memory stay visible even when the projection is off. A lectern shows "Why? Show sources" for every pattern.
- Visitors
- up to 8; one drives, the others watch
- Dwell time
- 4–8 minutes (assumed)
- Access
- the same controls on a tablet at seated height, with spoken chart descriptions
Discover
Random Walk: lose yourself in 200 years
A screen at standing height on the landing of the staircase, between Hodler's "Landsknecht" and the annual textile commission. Seven large buttons: Surprise me, Follow a person, an artwork, a word, the money, a city, a coincidence.
At the end of each journey a small printer gives the visitor a slip: six to eight stops, each with its year and source, and a code to reopen it online. No two slips are the same.
- Visitors
- one or two per journey
- Dwell time
- 2–5 minutes (assumed)
- Access
- buttons with text and tactile marks; large-print slips; the same journey on the visitor's phone
Interpret and speculate
Director 2127
A desk and chair in a small room, furnished as a director's office of 2127. The visitor asks by voice, by keyboard or from a printed card. The answer appears on two separate surfaces: archival evidence with its sources on the left, 2127 speculation on the right. Each surface carries its label in words.
Sometimes she answers: "I don't know. The surviving source material for the years 1843–1851 is insufficient." In the simulation, this answer builds trust.
- Visitors
- one at the desk, two or three listening
- Dwell time
- 5–10 minutes (assumed)
- Access
- spoken and written answers, adjustable text size, wheelchair space at the desk
04
Four visits, minute by minute
Simulated The visitors are invented. What they see on the screens is the real output of the prototype today.
A retired teacher who remembers the Katharinen shows
Saturday 11:05 · X-RAY, then Random Walk · 14 min
- 00:00She slides the handle to 1970–1990 and keeps only Exhibitions and Artists.
- 00:40The pulse chart rises sharply in the late 1970s: busiest years without a building.
- 02:10"Why?" shows the archive list: 11 shows in the Katharinen in 1980 alone.
- 06:00"Follow a person" lands on Roman Signer: Katharinen show, a 2007 group show, films of the empty building bought in 2025.
- 13:30She takes the printed slip home.
What changes: her memory becomes a source. A "Tell us what you saw" card at the rail would capture it.
A school class, 16-year-olds
Tuesday 09:30 · Director 2127 · 25 min in three groups
- 00:00Group 1 asks: "Which artists were underestimated?"
- 00:20Evidence: women had 26% of solo shows in 2003–11 and 71% from 2023. Speculation: "the most underestimated artists were already in the storerooms."
- 00:45"I don't know": nothing can be said before 1944.
- 08:00Group 2 types "Is AI used in the museum?" and gets the AI answer: "KI" appears in no exhibition text, only in the website's translation tool.
- 20:00Each group sorts three statements into evidence and speculation.
What changes: the class practises source criticism on a real institution. The split screen is the lesson.
A provenance researcher
Thursday 18:10, late opening · X-RAY · 40 min
- 00:00Period 1926–1945, layers Acquisitions and Donations.
- 03:00Contradiction finding: works credited "Sturzeneggersche Gemäldesammlung, Schenkung 1926" were acquired in 1936–38 through the fund in his name.
- 09:00Open question: which sales reshaped the collection after 1935? Coverage for the 1930s: 3%.
- 30:00She asks the registrar for the acquisition files.
What changes: the cockpit points research at a gap without making claims about any single work.
A tourist with twenty minutes
Sunday 15:40 · Random Walk · 3 min
- 00:00"Surprise me" starts in 2025 with "Glitch": 23,450 visitors.
- 00:30"Follow a coincidence" links 2025 to the return of a painting by Aert van der Neer to the heirs of Jacques Goudstikker, after research showed it had been in Göring's collection.
- 02:40Slip printed. They look up at the textile behind the screen.
What changes: a short visit still yields one real story linking building, collection and history.
05
A year of use
Model Move the sliders to test assumptions. The starting point is real: about 33,000 visitors in 2025 (press figure) and about 307 opening days.
| What | Estimate |
|---|
06
What could change, and for whom
Projection Expectations to test, not results. Each comes with a way to measure it.
Visitors
- See history and the quality of its record at once.Measure: share who open "Why?" or a coverage note
- Leave with a personal microhistory, the printed slip.Measure: slips printed, and reopened online
- Learn to tell evidence from interpretation.Measure: school worksheets, one exit question
The institution
- Its contradictions become content: the founding year, the "firsts", the Hodler purchase.Measure: corrections to the website and Wikidata
- The open questions become a digitisation list, starting with annual reports 1827–2023.Measure: coverage per decade, before and after
- Collecting policy gets a mirror: show-then-acquire, and the long silence on icons and French painting.Measure: board and programme commission discussion
Research and public
- Provenance research gains a map of gaps for 1926–1945.Measure: files requested, cases opened
- The jubilee gets an untold story: the busiest years without a building.Measure: coverage in Tagblatt, SRF, art press
- A model for other museums reading their archives with AI.Measure: requests and visits from peers
Risks
- Speculation read as fact.Keep two labelled surfaces; print the label on every slip
- Statements about living people, staff and donors.A curator reviews every finding that names a person
- Thin early data read as inactivity.Always show coverage next to a number
- Picture rights.Agree use with photographers and estates before opening
- A live AI Director could invent facts.Answer from the archive only, cite every claim, default to "I don't know"
07
From prototype to 8 October 2027
- Nov 2026Scan the annual reports 1827–2023 and the catalogues, and turn them into searchable text.
- Jan 2027Export the MuseumPlus records and link them to the archive: artist, exhibition, acquisition, donor.
- Feb 2027Rerun the seven agents on the full corpus. Replace every simulated record with real data.
- Apr 2027Curators choose the thirty most surprising findings for the exhibition.
- Jun 2027Build the three rooms. Test with visitors, including blind and low-vision visitors and a school class.
- 8 Oct 2027Open, 150 years to the day after the building first opened.
Evidencefrom public sources, cited in the prototype
Simulatedinvented visitors and example records
Projectionexpected impact
Proposalroom designs
Pictures from kunstmuseumsg.ch, credited as given there. Visitor figures 2023–2025 from press reports and the annual reports.