Kunstmuseum Bern opens Journey into Freedom. Capri - Skagen - Monte Verita on 30 October 2026, an exhibition of around 70 works that follows artists who, between 1830 and 1930, left Europe's industrial cities for three places at the continent's edges: the island of Capri near Naples, Skagen on the northern tip of Denmark, and Monte Verita in Ticino, Switzerland. Many of the works have never been shown in Switzerland before. The show runs until 31 January 2027.

The three destinations promised the same thing: freedom. In an age of social upheaval brought by industrialisation, painters sought alternative ways of living away from the large cities, and the exhibition traces how those experiments became artistic subjects in their own right. Alongside landscape and light, the show brings forward themes the colonies made newly visible, including women's emancipation, queer identity and a closer connection with nature, as artists imagined a freer and more communal future.

The exhibition also refuses to leave the dream unexamined. Those who stayed longer soon saw beyond the postcard image: fishermen risking their lives at sea, women, children and elderly people working hard, and poverty close at hand. Romantic and idealised views of the landscape hang alongside naturalistic, sometimes stark images of everyday working life, and the contrast between the two is central to the show's argument about what these colonies really were.

Featured artists include Anna Ancher, Michael Ancher, Marie Kroyer and P. S. Kroyer from the Skagen circle, Christian Krohg and Bertha Wegmann, and, from Monte Verita, Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach, Gustav Graser, Alexej von Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin, among others. The exhibition is co-curated by Livia Wermuth and Andreas Schwab, with loans including works from the Skagens Museum, among them Michael Ancher's 1897 scene of Anna Ancher and Marie Kroyer walking at Skagen Sonderstrand.