Kenny Schachter, the artist, curator, dealer, and irreverent art critic, has escaped New York in favor of Switzerland’s Engadin Valley for years, basing himself right above Vito Schnabel’s Saint-Moritz gallery (he can see the neon sign out of his window). Between teaching at the University of Zurich and working as an advisory-board member of the annual Engadin Art Talks conference, he has come to know the region’s art world—and its back roads—like a local.
The popular perception of Switzerland is as a stalwart of neutrality—a safe haven with the world’s most robust and stable economy. Then again, there’s also its sordid past as the Nazis’ primary banker and personal safe-deposit box, not to mention the immigration kerfuffle last month where the Swiss electorate narrowly voted down an attempt to cap immigration. As abhorrent as it is unsettling, I discovered while researching this story that Switzerland only granted women the right to vote in 1971, making it one of the last Western nations to do so. (Some autonomous cantons held out as late as 1990!) And, prior to 1988, Swiss law designated the husband as the “head of the family,” requiring his permission for a wife to open a bank account or work outside the home. For Christ’s sake, I’m astonished that women in Switzerland have never been barred from driving.