The Frame Archive is a non-profit organization based in Basel, Switzerland, founded in June 2025. We are dedicated to systematically gathering and sharing knowledge about picture frames — their history, their craft, and their complex, often overlooked relationship to art itself.

 

​​Our mission is to make the question of framing more visible. Through collaboration with institutions, curators, conservators, collectors, art historians, and all those passionate about art and its framework, we work to draw the frame out of the margins and into the conversation.

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Framing is a deeply curatorial act — one that shapes not only how we see art, but how we come to understand it. It selects and emphasizes. We don’t just look at art — we perceive through a frame.