In the 1950s and 1960s the bulk of the work carried out by the Paul-Klee-Stiftung [Paul Klee Foundation] under the two Directors of the Art Museum, Max Huggler und Hugo Wagner, focused first of all on the conservation of the collection. The works were recorded in an inventory, mounted and restored.

1956 was an important year, with the Foundation’s collection presented at an exhibition at Bern’s Art Museum; it ranks to this day as the largest Klee exhibition of all times, with some 756 exhibits. Indeed in an article on the exhibition the Neue Zürcher Zeitung quipped that Bern had become to Klee what Bayreuth was to Wagner.

The exhibition attracted a large number of requests for loans from outside Switzerland. This in turn led to a new area of work for the Foundation: the loaning of its exhibits. Although Max Huggler was initially reluctant to loan the collection because of the sensitivity of the exhibits, he was well aware of the significance of the collection for international exhibition activities.

By the second half of the 1950s the Foundation was organising what were almost export exhibitions, particularly to Scandinavia and Japan.