Stage design drawings (2022-2025)

The SAPA Foundation holds a comprehensive collection of approximately 7 000 stage design drawings. These so-called designs by artists in the fields of stage, costume and visual art served not only as templates for realised and unrealised stage productions; they also illuminate theoretical and conceptual reflections on stage practice. The collection focuses primarily on the period from 1895 to the 1970s and continues to grow today. The most renowned figures include Adolphe Appia, Roman Clemens, Caspar Neher, Max Sulzbachner and Karl Walser; the most recent additions comprise holdings by Jean-Claude Maret and Annelies Corrodi.

The aim of the project was the conservation treatment and substantive processing of the collection. It soon became apparent that more time than planned had to be devoted to each step of the preparation, as every individual holding presented a particular point of departure and required a correspondingly specific mode of treatment. A practice‑oriented strategy was developed to serve as a guideline for processing future holdings: the drawings are packed using acid‑free materials in folders with interleaving sheets and stored in plan drawers. A dedicated photographic station was set up for photographing the stage design drawings. As the results exceeded expectations in terms of quality (lighting, colour fidelity, resolution, and the format specifications for the digital image files), the majority of the documents were digitised in‑house, with only special formats being entrusted to an external service provider.

This project has brought to light a collection of high artistic value and of significance to the history of staging.

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We extend our thanks to the following foundations for their generous support:

Burgergemeinde Bern, Ernst Göhner Foundation, Cultural Foundation of the Bern Building Insurance (GVB), Pro Scientia et Arte Foundation, Ruth & Arthur Scherbarth Foundation