Harald Naegeli at the museum? The mere thought of bringing the so-called “sprayer of Zurich” to the small house on Predigerplatz seemed absurd to many art connoisseurs. The name was too big and the museum too insignificant. And anyway, graffiti in a museum – how could that possibly work? Especially since Naegeli never wanted to be domesticated, never wanted to be institutionalized.

So there were a number of arguments against giving Harald Naegeli a platform at the Musée Visionnaire at the beginning. What spoke for it – or rather who spoke for it – was Naegeli himself: if it had to be a museum, then it should be precisely our museum, an institution that is as visionary and nonconformist as he is, that questions the established cultural establishment and opens up spaces for discussion where others prefer to remain silent.

With the exhibition “The Known Unknown”, we brought Harald Naegeli to the museum for the first time after his return from his Düsseldorf exile in 2021. The goal: to paint a holistic picture of the artist. Because Naegeli is not just a sprayer. He was always a draftsman, too, who translates observations of nature into sketches and pictures with his fine, almost tender visual language, who tirelessly creates collages and cannot help but be an artist through and through – whether the canvas comes in the form of a house facade or as a sheet of paper in his sketchbook.

Our aim was to make the artist behind the sprayer visible and to show that it is worth walking through the city, indeed through life, with open eyes and an open heart for what art is or can be. Because Harald Naegeli’s museum is not just the Musée, it is above all the streets of Zurich’s old town, it is the parking garage under the ETH.

The idea of creating the digital platform sprayervonzürich.com ultimately came about in collaboration with Harald Naegeli’s assistant Anna-Barbara Neumann. Here, eagle-eyed observers with an eye for delicate spray-painted drawings can upload their photographic discoveries to an interactive map. After all, if the street is the museum, then everyone who is out and about on it should be able to help curate it.

Actually, the (love) relationship between the museum and the sprayer could have slowly faded away here. But when art is not confined to gallery walls and archives, but instead is in the middle of the city (or even under it), surprises are inevitable. For example, the renovation of the ETH parking garage, which has been home to around 35 original Naegelis for decades. In close collaboration with ETH, architects and a restorer, not only was a great deal of graffiti saved, but some of the spray-painted figures were actually brought into the museum as part of a special exhibition. To do this, the decades-old graffiti were removed from the walls in a complex process, the walls were removed and then put back up in the museum. This is an action that is probably unparalleled. Or has anyone ever heard of graffiti being hoisted out of the urban space and into the white cube together with its background?

The extraordinary exhibition may have contributed to the fact that the Naegeli hype still shows no sign of ending. We are still receiving requests for guided Naegeli walks in which we follow in the footsteps of the sprayer. We have even created an audio guide by children for children this year, together with two students from the “Schule im Museum” project. The book launch of Harald Naegeli’s latest work “Den Vogelflug, die Wolkenbewegung misst man auch nicht mit dem Zollstock!” also took place at the museum in June, accompanied by a benefit auction for which Naegeli provided the museum and the Hof Narr animal sanctuary in Egg with around a dozen drawings.

Even though there are now others making the spray cans clatter, Harald Naegeli is not thinking of stopping anytime soon. And we don’t want to stop celebrating the artist. There is a very special occasion for this on December 4. That’s when Harald Naegeli turns 85.

To mark this milestone birthday, we want to dedicate a very special shop window to the “Godfather of Graffiti”. On display: Zurich police “crime scene” drawings from the 1970s, which ended up in the Kunsthaus collection via a roundabout route – and which remind us once again what street art is actually all about at its core. Because even if Harald Naegeli’s works can be seen in museums today, without his breaking taboos and crossing boundaries, the iconic stick figures would ultimately have remained just illustrations. And probably long forgotten.

The opening of the Naegeli shop window at Beatenplatz 2 in Zurich will take place on December 4 from 12:15 to 12:45 and will be opened by Manuela Hitz, Anna-Barbara Neumann from Atelier Harald Naegeli and Angela Thomas from the Max Bill Foundation. Angela Thomas was very much involved in the controversy surrounding Naegeli’s allegedly illegal spray-painted figures in the 1970s and was also one of the initiators of a petition to preserve his works.

On December 12, we are also offering a one-hour graffiti tour in the footsteps of Harald Naegeli, starting at 5 p.m. The focus will be on the archive photos that are on display in the Amtshaus shop window and the Jelmoli parking garage, where Naegeli has also left spray-painted figures.

Meeting point: the “Naegeli shop window” at Beatenplatz 2, Cost: CHF 20/person

Registration at info@museevisionnaire.ch