Switzerland Today

Greetings from Bern,

If statues and sculptures in public spaces are nude, are they more likely to be male or female? It’s not something I’ve often thought about, but an interview today explains the challenges facing female artists, who remain underrepresented in media, museums – and especially Zurich’s public spaces.

© Keystone / Gaetan Bally

In the News: The federal technology institute ETH Zurich (pictured) remains the best higher education institution in the world outside the US and the UK.

• It was rated 15^th by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2022, published today. The other Swiss institutions in the top 200 are the University of Zurich (75), the University of Bern (101), the University of Basel (103), the University of Lausanne (176) and the University of Geneva (197).
• Granit Xhaka, captain of the Swiss national football team, has tested positive for Covid-19. The Swiss football federation announced the news after Xhaka was not named in the line-up for a friendly against Greece on Wednesday night. Although Switzerland won 2-1, Xhaka grabbed the headlines when it turned out that he hadn’t been vaccinated and hadn’t recovered from Covid-19. “It’s his decision – even a captain is a person and has rights,” reckoned the team’s new manager, Murat Yakin. Not everyone was impressed, given that Xhaka is now in doubt for World Cup qualifying games against Italy and Northern Ireland. “Reckless and unnecessary,” was the verdictExternal link of newspaper Blick.
• Positive (in the good sense) news is that Switzerland’s economy grew by 1.8% in the second quarter thanks to stronger household consumption as the easing of Covid-19 restrictions helped reverse earlier declines. Accommodation and food services made a clear recovery, as did arts, entertainment and recreation thanks to fewer restrictions. Financial services were the only sector to register a decline.

© Keystone/Peter Klaunzer

Do you think the 1% of the Swiss population who hold at least CHF3 million in shares should pay more taxes?

On September 26, Swiss citizens will vote on the so-called 99% initiative that aims to tax capital gains more heavily. Is it envy of the wealthy elite? Or an overdue redistribution of wealth? Tell us what you think in the comments below!

Hulda Zwingli

‘Do women have to be naked to be shown in Zurich’s public space?’

That’s the provocative question posed by Hulda ZwingliExternal link, an anonymous collective of women who have been tackling the under-representation of women in the Swiss art scene.

“You can decide whether to visit a museum or not, but in the public space you have to watch all of it – you can’t choose. You see it, and when you check, it’s mostly works made by men,” some of the artists explained in an interview, published today.

So what are the solutions? Hulda Zwingli says they can imagine “changing the artworks in public space, rotating them. Buying more works by women, and they should also have temporary exhibitions, which at the moment mainly consist of 75% male artists”.

The first statistics on the sector’s situation was published in 2019, as a result of a joint effort between SWI swissinfo.ch and Swiss public broadcaster, RTS.