The Museum der Kulturen Basel had its origins in the Museum der Stadt Basel, which opened in Augustinergasse in 1849. Containing examples of ancient American art derived from the collection of Lukas Vischer, the museum held one of the first ethnological collections to be put on public view in Europe. The museum's stores of tribal art grew during the latter half of the nineteenth century through the contributions of scholars such as Fritz and Paul Sarasin, Felix Speiser, and Paul Wirz, as well as a number of affluent citizens of Basel, and in 1917 the ethnological collection acquired a dedicated museum of its own. In 1944, the collection received the official title of Museum für Völkerkunde und Schweizerisches Museum für Volkskunde, which it retained until 1996, when the museum's current name came into common use. The museum building underwent comprehensive structural renovations between 1978 and 1986. A new addition designed by Herzog & de Meuron is currently under construction, and is scheduled to open in 2011.
As the largest museum of its kind in Switzerland, the Museum der Kulturen preserves around 300,000 objects and about the same number of historic photographs, including the holdings of the former Schweizerisches Museum für Volkskunde. The museum maintains collections of objects from Africa, Europe, Oceania, Asia, Indonesia, and the Americas, with particular strength in the arts of pre-Columbian Central and South America, West and Central Africa, Melanesia, Bali, and Tibet.