It started with a question. The kind that announces itself during quieter seasons, when the children are grown, the house is still, and the daily calendar, once a battlefield of logistics now sits blank.

What now?

In the late 1990s, New York native Gigi Kracht, now living in Zürich. since 1988—found herself in just that pause. She had long made a home at Baur au Lac, the stately five-star hotel owned by her husband, Andrea Kracht, whose family has run the property for six generations. The view was spectacular, the energy however… suspiciously calm. “I was used to buzzing activity,” she says. “New York is like electricity. You don’t realize it’s running through you until it’s gone.”

In an attempt to plug back in, she attempted hosting a series of ladies’ luncheons. “Charming,” she admits. “But that lasted two weeks.” So she turned her focus to writing her own column in Views, the hotel’s magazine, contributing arts coverage in her kitchen with late-night edits in her pajamas and all. As a true writer does. The column served to be fulfilling but not quite satiating. And so the question panged again. 

What now? 

This time, the magazine’s editor and friend of hers had an answer: “You have the most beautiful garden in Zürich.”

Right: “Fire on the Sea” by Jean-Marie Appriou, 2020, patinated aluminum and glass. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich / Vienna©. Photographed by Stefan Altenburger Photography, Zürich. Left: Featured sculpture in the 2024 Art in the Park.

It was true. And still is. The hotel property holds a rare Ginkgo biloba tree, gifted by the Emperor of Japan, anchors the garden behind Baur au Lac. In autumn, it turns a deep, cinematic red. Dramatic even. It’s so notable it’s registered with the Swiss government. More to the point: no one was seizing the opportunity to make something of this. 

So, she did.

That passing suggestion grew (organically, one might say) into Art in the Park, Zurich’s most quietly radical outdoor art exhibition. Held each June, just before Art Basel, it has become a beloved fixture on the international art calendar without ever fully behaving like one.

Now in its 23rd year and celebrating its 25th edition, the show remains what it always has been: independent, imaginative, and a little unscripted. No glossy branding campaigns. No mega-sponsors. No velvet ropes. Just art installed throughout the hotel’s private garden for a month in the open Swiss air. 

“I never wanted a white box gallery,” she says. “The park is the gallery. It tells you where the art wants to go.”

Top left: Sculpture featured in the 2024 Art in the Park. Top Right: “Room” by Sam Falls. I-beams and ceramics. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich / Vienna© the artistPhoto: Stefan Altenburger Photography. Bottom: Exterior photograph of the Baur au Lac hotel.

For 2025, Kracht leans fully into the surreal—a gentle rebellion against the digital overload and real-world chaos most of us are digesting every day. 

“We need fantasy right now,” she says, “but not the kind that numbs. The kind that shows us something deeper, maybe even uncomfortable.”

In the garden, that translates to a world that feels both mythic and oddly intimate. Sam Falls’ outdoor pavilion—made of gemstone terrazzo and steel—isn’t just a sculpture, it’s a kind of spiritual tuning fork. Its title is a list of its intended effects: calm and balance, endocrine healing, stress relief, overcoming fear, truthfulness. It could easily tip into parody except it doesn’t. It stands there, hushed and steady, as if the manicured lawn beneath it requested it by name. 

In another area, Jean-Marie Appriou’s cast-aluminum figures slither and shimmer—snakes with glass teeth, horses that feel both fossilized and futuristic. Their names; Acid Saliva, Cypress (Vessel), Le joueur de flûte—read like a table of contents of a dream. They feel like warnings and invitations at the same time. Creating a push and pull tension that feels, well, intentional. 

That tension continues with Valentin Carron, who playfully undermines Swiss tradition, taking something as nostalgic as a Piaggio Ciao scooter and rendering it precious. His work questions authenticity, but with a smirk. 

“At first I wasn’t sure about it,” Kracht admits. “But then I thought, if I’m slightly afraid, it’s probably working.”

The pieces don’t just sit prettily in the landscape. They challenge it and , occasionally, provoke the guests. “People sometimes frown. Then they smile. Then they frown again. That’s what I want.”

Kracht’s curatorial style is less institutional director, more editor with intuition and a Rolodex of artists who’ve become family to her. She’s worked with everyone from Nicolas Party—who she commissioned well before his pastels hit the seven-figure auction mark—to Rashid Johnson, who filled the hotel’s restaurant with linocut woodworks that nod to both Picasso and bullfighting culture. 

There’s also Pat Steir, whom Kracht calls “a second mother,” and John Chamberlain, who once sent her a styrofoam mock-up of his “Olive Oyl” sculpture, just because. Yes, Popeye’s girlfriend. That Olive Oyl. 

“I’m not interested in names unless the work speaks to me,” she says. “If it doesn’t make me feel something, I can’t pretend.” It shouldn’t work. But it does. Perhaps because Kracht isn’t trying to outpace the market or follow trends. She’s just curating what moves her and letting the rest unfold.

Over the years, pieces have found their way into the hotel’s interiors. From lobby to lounge to private dining room, the art has a way of blurring the line between luxury and cultural imprint. There is no official collection. It just…accumulates. Like fond memories materializing into old friends around a table. 

These days, Kracht splits her time between Zurich and New York, where she lives in a high-rise, a knee wobbling 41 floors up. “I used to be afraid of heights,” she says. “Now I sit by the floor to ceiling window and feel like I’ve conquered something.”

Precisely why her curation process doesn’t feel performative. It’s just who she is: someone who moves toward the uncomfortable, and often transforms it into something unforgettable. Though conquering often leaves us with both a feeling of accomplishment and then with a question. 

“So, what now?” I ask her. 

“No idea,” she shrugs. “That’s the beauty of it. Art in the Park doesn’t have a template. It just grows.”

And perhaps that’s its genius. In an age of algorithms, trend cycles, and hyper-curated cultural programming, Gigi Kracht has built something else entirely—a show that exists outside the frame. A garden, yes. But also a kind of portal you are invited to walk through. Touching grass alongside the surreal. 

“I suppose the hope,” she says as we wrap, “is that long after I’m gone, someone will walk through this place and feel something they can’t explain.”

And maybe they won’t need to.

Art in the Park 2025 will run from June 16 to July 23, open daily in the private garden of Zurich’s Baur au Lac.

Credits:

Written by Christina Wright | @cbiwright