Prof. Eduard Hüttinger Library / Annette Bühler Donation

Prof. Dr. Eduard Hüttinger (1926–1998) acquired a considerable private library in the course of his academic career. By the end of his life it contained some 25,000 volumes. Apart from Hüttinger’s specialist field, the art and culture of Venice, there are sizeable sections on the history of Italian art from the Renaissance to modernism, on Dutch painting, on the evolution of art history as a discipline and on broader contemporary and modern European art history. Other themes covered include philosophy, history and literary studies.

Eduard Hüttinger studied art history under Gotthard Jedlicka at the University of Zurich from 1946 until 1952, the year he submitted his dissertation on Tintoretto’s cycles in the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice. From 1955 to 1965 he was curator and exhibition organiser at Kunsthaus Zurich. Following his post-doctoral dissertation in 1963, devoted to the baroque sculptor Francesco Pianta, he was a lecturer and assistant professor at the University of Zurich from 1963 to 1966. From 1966 Hüttinger was Assistant Professor and from 1967 Full Professor of Modern and Recent Art History at the University of Heidelberg; in 1969 he was appointed to a Chair at the University of Bern, where he remained as Professor of Modern Art History and Dean of the Art History Seminar until his retirement in 1991. Hüttinger served from 1963 to 1982 on the Publications Committee of the Swiss Institute for Art Research and from 1982 to 1992 on the Board of the Foundation. From 1970 to 1981 he was a trustee of the Swiss arts council Pro Helvetia, and from 1970 to 1991 a member of the Bern Museum Committee.

A comprehensive bibliography of works by Eduard Hüttinger can be found in: Eduard Hüttinger, Porträts und Profile. Zur Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte, St Gallen: Erker, 1992, pp. 363–379, and also in: Eduard Hüttinger, Licht und Farbe. Zur Kunstgeschichte Italiens, edited by Juerg Albrecht and Regula Krähenbühl, Zurich: Swiss Institute for Art Research; Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2001, pp. 481–482 (Addendum).

After Eduard Hüttinger’s death, a large section of his library was gifted to the Swiss Institute for Art Research (SIK-ISEA) in 1999 by Annette Bühler. After extensively reviewing and recataloguing the inventory with funds provided by Ms Bühler, the Prof. Eduard Hüttinger Library / Annette Bühler Donation was integrated in 2019 into swisscovery, where it can be consolidated virtually through a deep link. For documentation purposes, the original holdings of Eduard Hüttinger’s research library can still be searched using an in-house database application. Thanks to Ms Bühler’s generous support, the Hüttinger Library is regularly updated with recent publications and currently (February 2020) contains 11,200 items.

The entire collection is housed in an off-site depot and can be ordered using swisscovery.