“In Basel, you have to surprise people — many believe they’ve already seen it all.”
From founding her own exhibition space in Los Angeles to directing a gallery branch for Wilde, Simmy Swinder Voellmy now finds herself in a moment of reinvention: no fixed gallery roster to tether her. Basel — she says — is the perfect city for this kind of freedom: dense with institutions yet compact enough to experiment quickly and see real results. We spoke with Simmy Swinder Voellmy about her background and her view of Basel’s art ecosystem, the shift from commercial galleries to artist-run initiatives, and her new curatorial chapter, with two exhibitions, one at former Soft Space and at Kunstforum Baloise Park just around the corner.
Simmy, you have been part of this city’s scene for some years now. Tell us about your background and what brought you to Basel in the first place?
SV: "I ran my own space in Los Angeles for five years, inviting galleries from abroad to present exhibitions. Together we would select an artist who could generate some buzz and resonate with LA audiences, and then co-produce a show, for example, with Karma International, who eventually took over the space when I moved to Basel.
I met my husband at Art Basel Hong Kong, where we were both working—he with the fair, I as an advisor—and we later decided to make Basel our home. At first it was meant to be temporary, but then the pandemic hit, and I realized what a generous, comfortable and supportive city this is. It’s an amazing place to raise children. My two girls have such autonomy over their bodies, and I don’t take that for granted. After a period working with Art Basel, I joined another of the city’s institutions, Schaulager, as VIP liaison for the Bruce Nauman exhibition produced jointly with MoMA in New York.”
In 2019, you took on a new role — becoming the director of Wilde gallery in Basel.
SV: “Dorian Sari, then a student at the HGK and an artist exhibiting with Wilde in Geneva, approached me and mentioned that the gallery was looking for a director for its Basel branch. So in 2019, I opened Wilde in Basel and curated the group shows. It was a wonderful opportunity to bring new voices into an established program, especially given that Wilde, founded in 1990 in Geneva, is such a longstanding gallery.
Many of its artists are well known in Romandy, but there’s quite a divide between the German and French-speaking regions. We would bring these “famous-in-Geneva” artists to Basel, and few people here knew who they were. So the group shows became the perfect opportunity for me to introduce local artists to our audiences, in some cases for the very first time, such as Cassidy Toner or Seline Burn. There is no shortage of strong artists here.
Now, Wilde has decided to no longer run an active program in Basel, and after six years I am on my own. I finally have time to think about contemporary art at a macro level, about the trends I’m seeing, rather than running a fixed gallery program. It’s truly a discovery phase: I do many studio visits, see a lot of exhibitions, and nourish my own projects.”
What makes this city so attractive for artistic endeavors?
SV: “Having lived between Los Angeles and Basel, I've come to really appreciate what makes this city so special. Basel carries cultural weight. There’s a strikingly dense concentration of cultural institutions for its population size. Not only do you have world-class museums, Kunsthallen, and art fairs, you also have the art school, foundations, independent spaces, galleries, and even multinational corporations that are deeply supportive of the arts, all within a bikeable city.
Add to that a knowledgeable collector base, strong fabrication know-how, and the tri-border context that keeps ideas circulating across languages and disciplines. The scale helps too: you can test something on Tuesday, iterate by Friday, and have the right people see it the following week. Perhaps slightly hyperbolic, but in any case, it’s rigorous without being performatively hectic, which is rare.
All of this gives Basel an impressive reputation—one I try to uphold. At the same time, in such a culturally saturated city, there sometimes seems to be a lack of curiosity. It isn’t easy to capture attention in a place where art is ingrained from such a young age. Because it’s woven into the city’s fabric, some people take it for granted and slip into a seen-it-all, nothing-surprises-me attitude.”
Looking back: What has changed in the local scene in the past few years?
SV: “It’s essential to understand what’s happening locally within the context of global shifts. While many commercial galleries have closed or consolidated in recent months, grassroots and artist-run spaces are thriving. These spaces represent a different energy. They are more community-oriented, more experimental, and essential to keeping the scene dynamic. Basel has maintained its position as an international art hub while becoming more inclusive and open to different models of presenting art. There's also been a generational shift in collecting, with younger voices and more diverse perspectives entering the conversation.
The rhythm has quickened. Independent and artist-run initiatives cycle in and out more rapidly, which keeps the dialogue fresh. There’s more time-based and hybrid work in circulation, and installation standards have risen even as budgets are stretched further. Institutions collaborate more visibly, and the audience feels younger and more international throughout the year, not only during the fair. On the practical side, production partners have become more agile, and there’s a wider comfort with digital tools, even for very material practices.”
You have two shows coming up, one at former Soft Space and one at Kunstforum Baloise Park - two completely different spaces with divergent vibes and backgrounds. What are these shows about, and how does the type of presenting institution influence them?
SV: “These are indeed completely different contexts, which is what makes curating for both so exciting and challenging.
At Baloise Kunstforum, I'm presenting On your marks, get set, go!, which runs from November through May 2026. This exhibition explores the moment of suspense before action begins, that threshold where the future exists as pure possibility. I'm bringing works from the Baloise Collection by Tracey Moffatt, Mrzyk & Moriceau, Mario Bollin, and Karin Schaub-Ruperti into dialogue with invited artists: Esther Hunziker, Clare Kenny, Dirk Koy, Ai Makita, Tobias Nussbaumer, Sibylle Ruppert, Julia Steiner, and René Wirths.
It's an institutional setting with a built-in audience of professionals who will encounter the show in their daily work lives, which creates its own kind of dialogue. I'm really looking forward to seeing how both these audiences and the wider public react to the works I've chosen and the stories I want to tell through them.
The Charles Benjamin show at Clarastrasse 50 is entirely different. This building was formerly an apartment building with a flower shop on the ground floor and later became a creative hub. It's owned by a friend of mine who plans to demolish it and replace it with another mixed-use space that continues to allow for experimentation. Construction is scheduled to begin on November 17, so we are the final project in that space, taking it over for two weeks before it's torn down. In fact, our finissage on November 15 will be by candlelight, since electricity will be shut off the day before.
I've known Charles Benjamin for many years and trust his vision and execution completely. He's a Swedish-born, Basel-based painter who studied at the HGK and used to work with me as a technician at Wilde. It's a wonderful evolution in our relationship for me to now curate a solo exhibition devoted to his art practice.
Charles often treats painting as an architectural device, an approach particularly well-suited to the building’s story. A funny thing about painting is that it always seems to carry this crisis of legitimacy. Can a painting change the world? The answer seems to be no. That said, painting may not be able to change the world, but it can change the room.
For this show, he has transformed the space with a 12 x 7 meters painting in a gingham motif—a pattern laden with connotations—which he lays on the floor. Tongue-in-cheek, he leans into the notion of art as decorative to probe a "full" kind of emptiness that can reconfigure how a room feels.
Each space calls for a distinct curatorial approach. At the Kunstforum Baloise Park, I'm working within an established collection and creating conceptual bridges between historical and contemporary voices for an audience that experiences art in their professional environment. At Clarastrasse, the conditions allow for a more agile approach; it's about creating an encounter that feels urgent and alive. The two venues represent complementary and necessary poles of Basel's art ecosystem.”
October 2025
///
///
Simmy Swinder Voellmy (*1985) is a Swiss-American curator and art historian with an international orientation. Her intercultural perspective shapes a dialogue-driven curatorial practice that she has developed across museums, galleries, and independent initiatives. She studied philosophy and art history in Berkeley and Padua, as well as Art Business at the Sotheby’s Institute in New York. As the founder of the art space Four Six One Nine in Los Angeles, she realized numerous international, collaborative exhibition projects. From 2019 to 2024, she directed Wilde Gallery in Basel, and previously worked for Art Basel and the Schaulager.
