One Collection, Many Perspectives
Multimedia Encounters at the Hilti Art Foundation
The Hilti Art Foundation’s museum in Vaduz has been under the direction of Dr Karin Schick since 2024. One of her aims has been to open up the foundation’s prestigious private collection to a wider audience. But how can you do that with a museum that’s located far away from the established centres of art? The answer is to focus on targeted local and international collaborations and to combine them with a new media guide – one that reflects the diverse encounters that visitors can experience both with and within this collection that stretches from Classical Modernism to the present day.
“We’re not exactly situated in one of the world’s major cities, and not everyone will be able to visit us in person,” explained Dr Karin Schick in an interview with the magazine Neues Museum (see Links for the full article). “At the same time, Liechtenstein is a very rich country culturally, with incredible institutions dedicated to a wide variety of arts. We knew that in order to develop a concept that perfectly fitted our situation we’d need an experienced partner – so that’s why we turned to tonwelt, a specialist in museum guides that I’d already worked with before.” The request to tonwelt was unusual in that it didn’t just involve a standard audio tour, but a fully comprehensive concept for opening up and communicating the art collection to the public. Above all, it was important to the management of the Hilti Art Foundation (HAF) that tonwelt focused upon the visitors’ encounters with and within the collection: Which artworks shed light upon each other? What do they have to say to children and students? How do musicians and theatre-creators react to these works from Classical Modernism and contemporary art? Above all, how can content from the guide be published beyond the guide itself?
Content and Technology – Hand in Hand
The team’s desire for accessibility paired with multimedia presentations was reflected in their technical choice. The HAF opted for the supraGuide DIVA – a high-performance media guide device with a large 6.3-inch display capable of presenting high-quality content in two languages with excellent performance and clarity. Alongside that, the guide is also offered as a Progressive Web App (PWA) for visitors who want to use their own smartphones. This mix of technologies is ideal for increasing reach and usage rates – and it’s certainly paying off, with a demonstrable increase in the length of time spent in the museum. Regardless of whether visitors choose the supraGuide DIVA or the digital BYOD guide, both are available free of charge.
Audio for Seeing, Video for Understanding: Media Diversity for Multi-Perspective Engagement
The HAF relies on two primary media types for its multimedia outreach: audio and video. The museum’s Director Dr Karin Schick has recorded video clips of between 1½ and 2 minutes to provide visitors with a lively and accessible introduction to the exhibition’s content and its art-historical context. General audio commentaries also play alongside most works, and these can be enhanced by videos in the in-depth sections that add valuable contextual information and background stories. To provide these enhanced features, tonwelt produced a series of high-quality clips in collaboration with the HAF that not only include contributions from the artists or their descendants, but also personal recollections from the acquisition history narrated by the art-collector Michael Hilti himself. Additional in-depth contributions from conservators, researchers and experts also highlight specific details of the works and their historical impact on art-history.
As Dr Karin Schick puts it: “The aim of this media diversity is to open up our perspectives. Each work of art thrives on the range of interpretations that exist about it. No two people see, think or experience a work of art in exactly the same way. Whenever we encounter other people speaking about a piece from their perspective, it expands our own view of the work so that its ambiguity becomes even more apparent. Art creates a safe, shared space where we can come together, exchange perspectives and get to know each other better.” Communications Manager Lena-Sophia Nachbaur adds: “We’ve been able to bring this diversity of perspectives to life through interdisciplinary collaboration. By doing that, our exhibition has become something that can challenge and inspire visitors in different ways.”
Refined Formats for an Exquisite Collection
The Hilti Art Foundation’s collection spans works from the late 19th century to the present day, and its uniqueness inspires innovative concepts. For instance, the Irish-American artist Sean Scully is represented with over twenty works in the collection. For the exhibition “In Touch. Encounters in the Collection” his works took centre stage alongside paintings by Paul Klee. The media guide for that collection included collaborations with both the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern and the artist Sean Scully himself. By involving such artists and contemporary witnesses, unique content can be created that serves as a special form of oral history that can’t be read or experienced anywhere else!
Special Formats Online and Onsite
The “In Touch” exhibition featuring works by Paul Klee and Sean Scully ran from November 2025 to April 2026. To celebrate it, the HAF collaborated with tonwelt to produce a 30-minute documentary film that included a profile of Sean Scully in his New York studio. The film held its premiere during the closing event of the “In Touch” exhibition.
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Hilti Art Foundation
Vaduz (FL), since 2025
Multimedia guiding and Creative Content
Art Museum
- Content production (audio and video)
- UX/UI
- Copywriting
- Translation
- Multimedia guide supraGuide DIVA
- PWA
