When Tanja Bechtler walks through the bright and airy rooms of Charlotte’s Bechtler Museum, which houses her family’s extensive collection of modern art, she sees more than masterpieces. She sees childhood memories.
Bechtler, the middle of three sisters, remembers hanging on the arms of Germaine Richier’s bronze sculpture, “La Sauterelle, grande,” on the lawn of her grandparents’ estate in Zurich, Switzerland.
The distorted face of the 4-foot “Grasshopper Woman” can alarm a child, but its outstretched hands and knobby arms made it “fun to climb on,” Bechtler recalls.
Her grandparents, Hans and Bessie Bechtler, raised their family and grew their businesses with the foundational idea that art should be shared and enjoyed.
Their love of the arts and music was passed down by Hans’ mother Anna, a painter. They started collecting it after Hans and his brother Walter developed air compressor technology used in military equipment, heating and air conditioning, and textile production.
Their first significant purchase was one of the “Bather” series by French impressionist Edgar Degas. In the 1950s, they started collecting contemporary work of artists they met and socialized with from an artists’ colony near the Bechtler’s country home in southern Switzerland.
Pieces from their favorite artists and friends adorned the walls of both their businesses and homes.
“The idea is that [everybody] should also be able to enjoy visual arts, even while at work,” Tanja Bechtler says.
At their Zurich home, “There was art everywhere,” she says.
Framed paintings lined the stairs. Family photos were propped up in front of a wooden sculpture. The coffee table was a work of art, as was the rug. Bessie used to play the piano with a Gunther Haese wire sculpture on it, and the springs would vibrate to the music. Tanja remembers her grandfather flipping through oversized books containing paintings.
Andy Warhol painted portraits of the Bechtler family that hung over the living room couch. Tanja, who was 6, remembers squirming as Warhol’s assistant took Polaroids of them.
She swam their basement pool next to a statue she thought of as a “green blob.”
“I never saw the actual person in this,” she says.
Bechtler is referring to “Vive Moi” or “Long Live Me” by French-American sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle, which is on display at the Bechtler Museum.
In 1979, her father, Andreas, moved their family to Charlotte to run the family-owned Pneumafil Corporation and to explore his own interests as an artist. He fell in love with banana pudding and the lifestyle.
“I think he felt the urge to come to America because this country gives people a lot of freedom to create,” Bechtler says.
In the late 1980s, he helped develop the Carillon building on Trade Street. In its lobby hangs “Cascade,” a kinetic sculpture Andreas commissioned Swiss sculptor and family friend Jean Tinguely to create.
When his parents died in the late 1990s, Andreas inherited half of their art collection. He donated it for the creation of a new museum in uptown Charlotte dedicated to modern art. The Bechtler Museum opened in 2010 as the only one of its kind in the South.
The Bechtler is recognizable by the iconic 17-foot firebird statue out front, covered in mirrored glass pieces for a whimsical appeal. It’s the green piece inside by the same artist, Niki de Saint Phalle, that still captures Tanja’s attention.
Now, at 57, she can appreciate the exaggerated curves of a female form and an artist who overcame mental health struggles to express a woman’s lively spirit.
Tanja, who played cello for the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra for 12 years, now performs with her own Bechtler Ensemble in a concert series at The Bechtler. Every year she commissions new music from composers from around the world to complement the art exhibitions. She dedicates her concerts to HORA®️Trance Sport, a global youth training movement which promotes emotional resilience. It’s just another way her family makes art accessible.
“To see other people enjoying art,” Bechtler said. “To me, that's a joy.”
The Bechtler Museum of Modern Art celebrated its 15th anniversary in January. Executive director Todd Smith offers insights into the latest programming and points of emphasis.
Fifteen years in, what’s new at the museum?
The first decade was about showcasing the collection and making sure residents and visitors to Charlotte knew the strength of the collection. Since my arrival (in 2020), we've been expanding that to showcase not just the collection, but exhibitions from around the world that either pay tribute to the modern artists in the collection or have a connection to those artists, and to expand the idea of what modern art is.
So it’s adding to what the Bechtlers started?
No private collection can be truly comprehensive, so we try to augment that so our visitors and our supporters understand that modernism existed in Europe from 1900 to 1970, but also around the world during that same period. While the Bechtlers collected primarily European artists, modernism itself was an international movement, so we try to fill in some of those holes with our exhibitions and more importantly, showcase living artists who today work in some of the same traditions of modern art.
What role does founder Andreas Bechtler play, if any, in day-to-day happenings?
From the beginning, he's not been hands-on, but since the pandemic, he has stepped away even more. We see him on occasion. It's always great to see him. Normally, he'll sneak in and see a show without telling us, so he can get his own opinion of it. He's an artist himself, so he brings a whole different perspective to looking at the art. Oftentimes, if we catch him in the gallery, we'll go ask him questions about the work on view because he's got great stories to tell about either how his parents collected it or growing up around the work.
How is the museum continuing the Bechtlers’ tradition of making art accessible?
We've launched initiatives around pre-K education, health and wellness and the relationship to the arts. We did programs with early-onset dementia, low to no vision. After Covid, we spent six months strategizing and kept going back to loneliness as a significant concern for the public, whether it's youth, middle age, or senior citizens. We're launching a program with our first cohorts of people referred by behavioral health specialists at Novant. Our hope is after the first year, we can develop programs we can take out into the community.
Learn more at Bechtler.org.
Their first significant purchase was one of the “Bather” series by French impressionist Edgar Degas.