The Kunstmuseum Thun annually presents an overview of the artistic creation in the region. So far this was done in the framework of the exhibition Hofstettenstrasse.

The Hofstettenstrasse has been a regular programme of the Kunstmuseum Thun for a decade. Under the new name Cantonale Berne Jura, it will be presented for the first time as a cantonal annual exhibition together with other institutions. This will create a new cultural exchange among the regions, which will benefit all involved parties - artists and organisers. Distributed among various art galleries and museums, the Cantonale Berne Jura will provide the artists with an important and broad platform to present the at once pleasurable and contradictory variety of Bernese and Jurassic art to audiences. On the second weekend of December 10 and 11, artists from Thun and the surrounding region will open their studios to the public. The Kunstmuseum will release a brochure with a site plan that tells the public how to reach the various studios.

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With the exhibition Davide Cascio and Peter Stämpfli: James Bond & Pin-Ups the Kunstmuseum Thun connects two artists from different generations who are both committed in their own way to pop art and the ideas of the 1960s and 1970s. In various media including painting, film, collage and installation, they deal with the utopias, desires and obsessions of this period from different time perspectives.

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 Hans Op de Beeck (born 1969 in Turnhout) uses a wide variety of media in his oeuvre – he paints, draws, photographs, films and develops sculptures and monumental installations. He also writes stories and designs stage sets. In his parallel worlds he creates fictitious places, moments and characters, which he hopes will be accepted by the spectator as something real for one moment. In his play with illusion, the artist questions the complex relationship between reality and representation, of what we see and what we want to believe in order to better deal with one's own inadequacies. His evocative visual imagery produces in us disturbing, melancholic images full of ambivalence and in this way reflect the tragicomic absurdity of our postmodern existence.

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This year Kunstmuseum Thun is hosting the Louise Aeschlimann and Margarete Corti grant again. The Aeschlimann-Corti grant is awarded annually by the Bernische Kunstgesellschaft (Bern Art Society) , and is the most highly endowed private art grant of the Canton of Bern. The participation in the grant competition and the related exhibition is open to artists (born 1970 and later) who have been living in the Canton of Berne for at least one year or who are natives. The winners of the grants and sponsorship awards are selected in a two-tier procedure, and moreover the works are compiled for the exhibition.

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Urbanisation and globalisation are a popular topic in art these days. With Profession: Farmer. A collection exhibition with guests Kunstmuseum Thun switches the perspective and highlights agriculture, as it still characterises and shapes our life and environment as in former times. The collection of Kunstmuseum Thun bears witness to the relevance agriculture also had for art until very recently. Works from our own collection form the basis of the exhibition, but are complemented by works from contemporary artists as well as by older photographic images. Particular emphasis is placed on the life and work of farmers today, 60 years back and before that, and also on questions of the visibility of agriculture.

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