On 24 February 1960, the collector's widow and children, Charlotte Bührle-Schalk, Dr. Dieter Bührle and Hortense Anda-Bührle established the Foundation Collection E.G. Bührle, domiciled in Zurich. They handed over three-fifths of the works to the Foundation based on a partition which ensured that the structure and integrity intended by the collector remained visible in the Foundation. The Foundation is established in the house on Zollikerstrasse 172 where the collector stored his pictures. The entire villa, which dates from 1886, is now converted into a museum and is open to the public since June 1960. All the costs for operating and maintaining the museum continue to be met by the collector's family.

In 1973, a catalogue raisonné of the entire collection was produced by the family-owned Artemis publishing house (second edition 1986). In 1976, the house on Zollikerstrasse was thoroughly renovated. To celebrate the centenary of Bührle's birth, a selection of important pictures from the Foundation and the private collection was exhibited in 1990-91 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Montreal, the Yokohama City Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts in London. A new, complete catalogue of the Foundation's collection was published in 2004/05 in 3 volumes.

On 10 February 2008, the museum fell prey to armed robbers. Four of the collection's major works were stolen from the Large Hall on the ground floor: Paul Cézanne's Boy with the Red Waistcoat, Edgar Degas' Count Lepic and his Daughters, Vincent van Gogh's Blossoming Chestnut Branches, and Claude Monet's Poppies near Vétheuil. The pictures by van Gogh and Monet were retrieved one week later, but the others remain missing.