The Verbier 3-D Foundation is a non-profit cultural organization dedicated to promoting contemporary art, environmentalism and education through its Artist Residency and Sculpture Park.
Founded in 2010 by New York–based artist Madeleine Paternot and Verbier–based artist Kiki Thompson, and curated for the past decade by Alexa Jeanne Kusber, the pioneering organization has established an experimental Artist Residency and Sculpture Park at 2,300 meters above sea level. Rooted in the dramatic Alpine landscape and local community of the Val de Bagnes, Switzerland, the program fosters artistic exploration in dialogue with its unique surroundings.
The foundation’s mission is to support both emerging and established artists, challenging them to push beyond their comfort zones and create new site-specific works that engage critically with environmental themes and the Alpine context.
The research-driven residency, curated by Alexa Jeanne Kusber with curatorial advisor Paul Goodwin, embraces a cross-disciplinary approach that invites artists to respond to contemporary environmental challenges and climate concerns. Through collaborations with the local community, as well as with scholars, scientists, and the public, the residency offers a platform for exploring the Alpine landscape as a space of mental reflection, aesthetic experimentation, and social exchange.
The Sculpture Park is a dynamic, open-air exhibition showcasing multimedia works created on-site by artists during their residencies. Currently, 16 pieces are on display, featuring renowned artists such as Rana Begum, Olaf Breuning, James Capper, Fragmentin, Gregory Coates, Haroon Mirza, Chloe Dewe Mathews, and Josette Taramarcaz, among others.
Explore our collection of visiting and collaborating artists, delve into past and upcoming exhibitions, and engage with our dynamic education programs designed to deepen understanding of contemporary art practices and environmental issues—fostering meaningful dialogue between artists and communities.
What we do
Our aim is to generate an aesthetic sensibility in the arts and for artists to develop innovative series of works and creative propositions in situ that can provide a prism to see the fragility, but also the beauty, of our environment in a new light.
Sculpture park
The Sculpture Park, located at an altitude of 2,300 meters in the Swiss Alps, is a space where visitors can experience monumental sculpture and site-specific commissions.
Our education programme offers a diverse program to increase the understanding of contemporary art practices, our changing environment and fosters a dialogue between artists and communities.
The power of art is its ability to articulate human emotions and values such as beauty and truth. On the mountain, faced with such sublime vistas, the visitor can experience these works of art… completely removed from the gallery or museum, directly confronting the truth of nature. This is the true meaning of a museum without walls.
Paul Goodwin, Verbier 3-D Curator
Verbier 3–D Sculpture Park, or the museum without walls
In 2011, the 3-D Foundation established Verbier’s first Sculpture Park along the scenic trail between the La Chaux and Ruinettes ski lifts, at an altitude of 2,300 meters.
The park serves as a platform for both emerging and established artists, fostering dialogue at the intersection of art and environmentalism. Each year, artists-in-residence create experimental and thought-provoking works that remain on view for a minimum of two years.
Visitors of all ages are invited to experience the artists’ research and engagement with the local community, through the research themes of climate, knowledge, and creativity set against the breathtaking Alpine landscape that informs and shapes the work.
Exposed to extreme environmental conditions such as snow, wind, water, and sun, the artworks are either rotated over time or conceived as time-based installations that evolve with the elements.
Free guided tours are offered year-round, providing deeper insight into the works and their relationship with the natural world.
Kiki Thompson, co-founder of Verbier 3-D, is a professional artist and designer. She spent the formative years of her life in New York, received a BA (Hons) in Art and French from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, UK., then returned to Verbier, Switzerland.
Inspired by the rugged mountains of the Alps, she segued into a short career as a professional snowboarder following the World Cup Circuit and chasing winter between hemispheres. Many of her sculptures have the same sinuous lines that are left on the mountain after a fresh snowfall.
Kiki has exhibited in Switzerland, New Zealand, New York, California and London. Her artwork appears in prominent public collections in New Zealand and Switzerland as well as in notable private collections worldwide. She is the Art Director of Swiss Bright Design: sustainable sculptural lighting.
When the artists are in residence in Verbier, she strives to push them out of their comfort zone to get them to a new level in their artistic practice. She is a strong advocate of the educative component of the residency for a grass roots understanding of contemporary art practices.
Madeleine Paternot
CH / USA
Madeleine Paternot co-founder of Verbier 3-D is a painter and published author, based between New York and London. She received a B.A. in Anthropology from Vassar College (NY) in 1995. She has a Higher National Certificate (HNC) in Fine Art in 1998, Kensington & Chelsea College (London).
Madeleine was selected for “Swiss Art in the UK 2001” and showed at the Swiss Embassy in London. Over the past 16 years she has participated in multiple group exhibitions and more than a dozen solo shows. Her work has appeared in private and public collections in London, Killarney, Paris, Milan, Lausanne, Verbier, Dubai, Boston and New York.
Nomadic by nature, Paternot has lived all over the world, using her travels as a springboard for her own artworks.Paternot truly champions international exchange as a way to enhance creativity and this is a frequent focus within her artistic and educational business endeavours. As well as an intrinsic part of the making of Verbier 3-D Artists Residency
She completed a residency in Painting at the School of Visual Arts, (NY) in 2009 and 2010. It was during the SVA residency, which both Kiki and Madeleine attended, that the Verbier 3-D Foundation was initially crystallised.
Alexa Jeanne Kusber
USA
Alexa Jeanne Kusber is an American independent curator and creative based in Zurich. Throughout her career she has maintained a focus on questioning and expanding the notion of curating.
Since moving to Switzerland, she currently is the Curatorial Director at the Verbier 3-D Foundation, a non-profit cultural organization dedicated to promoting contemporary art, environmentalism and education through its Artist Residency and Sculpture Park. In parallel, she was the Public Programmes Curator for the pioneering MuDA - Museum of Digital Art in Zurich until 2020.
As an independent curator, she has curated and co-curated various exhibitions and cultural projects internationally, spanning the United States, the UK, and Switzerland. Notable collaborations in Switzerland include partnerships with ETH, University of Zurich, and EDHEA, while globally, she has contributed to projects such as Jeremy Deller at the Venice Biennale (2013), [re]locate (UK, 2013), and 'The Museum of Everything' (UK, 2009). Demonstrating her commitment to education, she has developed cross-disciplinary programs in Switzerland since 2014.
Alexa has actively participated in curatorial panel discussions, recently engaging with UNESCO Learning Planet (Paris), Asia House (London), ZKM (Karlsruhe), and NRW Forum (Dusseldorf). She has written essays for magazines and publications including Surface Magazine (2013), Critical Contemporary Culture (LSE) (2010 - 2014) and In Search of Frankenstein: Mary Shelley's Nightmare (2018).
Alaina Simone
USA
Alaina Simone is the owner and founder of two businesses: Alaina Simone Incorporated, an artist liaison consultancy focused on internationally recognized artists, gallery collections and institutions, and Alaina Simone Productions LLC, a production company that specializes in creative partnerships between brands, cultural influencers and contemporary artists. She has produced and curated exhibitions, with corresponding educational programming, in the United States and abroad. Simone’s independent practice focuses on the intersectionality of race, gender, power, identity and the environment, as it relates to the African diaspora and women.
Leading publications have recognized her exhibitions, including the The New York Times, Art in America, and The New Yorker among others. She has placed work in public and private institutions including Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Fowler Museum at UCLA, and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, to name a few. She is a Board Member of Verbier 3-D since its inception in 2010 and a committee advisor for SculptureCenter, Watermill Center and the National Arts Club among others. Simone was a guest speaker at New York Arab Art & Education Initiative Summit (UNESCO), Pratt University and IESA International, to name a few. She lives and works in New York City.
Paul Goodwin
UK
Professor of University of the Arts London, Paul Goodwin is an independent curator, urban theorist and researcher. His curatorial, research and writing projects extend across the interdisciplinary fields of contemporary art and urbanism with a particular focus on black and diaspora artists, and visual cultures. Paul has focused on the dynamics of how processes of migration, globalisation and transnationalism are yielding new forms of innovative artistic and curatorial practices in European, African and American contexts.
From 2008 to 2012 as a curator at Tate Britain he directed the pioneering Cross Cultural Programme that explored questions of migration and globalisation in contemporary British art through a programme of international conferences, workshops, talks and live art events.
Current research projects in development include a project on the relationship between black radical imaginaries, Afrofuturism and cities in the UK, USA and South Africa and Ghosts: technologies/subjectivities an exhibition and research programme across University of the Arts London in 2014-2016.
Goodwin is curatorial director of the 3-D Foundation. During each residency he provides personal directed feedback for each artist.
