Musée cantonal des beaux-arts

Le musée cantonal des beaux-arts détient une très riche collection de peintures, dessins, sculptures et petite collection d’estampes d’artistes suisses et surtout vaudois du 18e s. à nos jours (les frères Sablet, Ducros, Saint-Ours, Diday, Calame, Gleyre, van Muyden, David, Auberjonois, Buchet, Biéler, Bocion, Vautier, Anker, Borgeaud, Holder, G. Giacometti, Hermanjat, Soutter, Vallotton, Steinlen, Bailly, Rollier, Spoerri, Iseli, Cahn, Disler, etc.). Le legs Widmer présente une collection d’art français (Cézanne, Degas, Renoir, Bonnard, Marquet, Matisse, Utrillo). Le fonds d’art contemporain comprend des œuvres d’artistes suisses et étrangers (Rainer, Merz, Ikemura, Oppenheim, Verjux, Nauman, Boltanski, Jaar, Green).

This museum greets you in the following languages: D/F/E
Opening 1906

Current exhibitions

The collection

12.05.2020 - 31.12.2022

The collection is on permanent display for the first time: some 300 works, from the 18th century to the present make it possible to see here what cannot be found elsewhere!

Free admission

The exhibition is documented in the following languages: D/F/E
Guided tours are offered in the following languages: F/E

Anne Rochat. In corpore

11.12.2020 - 23.05.2021

For her show featured in the MCBA Espace Projet, Anne Rochat (*1982 in the vallée de Joux; lives and works in Berlin) unfolds a panorama of her work from the last…
Free entrance

The exhibition is documented in the following languages: D/F/E

Maurice Denis. Amour

02.03.2021 - 16.05.2021

Maurice Denis (1870-1943) is a painter and major theoretician of modern French art at the turn of the 20th century. This show – the first devoted to the artist in Switzerland in 50 years – focuses on the early years of Denis’s career. The novel visual experiments of the “Nabi of the beautiful icons” gave way to the serene
splendor of the symbolist works, followed by an equally daring reflection on the foundation of a new classicism.

The exhibition is documented in the following languages: D/F/E
Guided tours are offered in the following languages: F/E

Matières en lumières. Sculptures from Rodin to Louise Bourgeois

02.03.2021 - 16.05.2021

Major works from private Swiss collections (some of which will be on public display for the first time) are exhibited in dialogue with pieces from the museum’s own collections. From the late 18th century to the present, and through 8 thematic sections (seizing the moment, sculpting emotion, bestiaries, etc.), the exhibition questions the issues raised by a singular art, a meeting of material and light, time and space.

The exhibition is documented in the following languages: D/F/E
Guided tours are offered in the following languages: F/E

René Bauermeister. California Dreaming

12.03.2021 - 30.05.2021

Aluminum, polyester, Plexiglas, and neon are some of the materials that René Bauermeister (1935–1985) employed in creating his sculptures in the late 1960s. Drawing on a collection he donated to MCBA in 1976, the show features objects that the Swiss-French artist produced in multiple iterations in an esthetic akin to Pop Art. His sculptures evince the tireless quest for innovation by a discreet artist whose ambitions and references ran as far as the coast of California.

The exhibition is documented in the following languages: D/F/E
Entrée gratuite

Next exhibition(s)

Jean Otth. The Spaces of Projection

18.06.2021 - 12.09.2021

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A pioneer of video art in CH, Otth began in the late 1960s to use the visual possibilities offered by the new technologies of the day, including slides as a projected dematerialized image, television and its particular vocabulary, and video and its experimental moving character. Be it his moving images, paintings, drawings, or installations, the issues raised by representation itself – or its absence – lie at the heart of the artist’s experiments.

The exhibition is documented in the following languages: D/F/E
Guided tours are offered in the following languages: F/E

Sandrine Pelletier. The Crystal Jaw. Prix Gustave Buchet 2021

18.06.2021 - 29.08.2021

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Sandrine Pelletier works with materials and their potential, wood, ceramic, charcoal, glass, metal, and mirrors. These are the fields of physical and sensual exploration that the artist transforms to better occupy a site. Back from Cairo, this artist, a native of Lausanne, sustains her visual experiments with novel references and new ways of working inspired by the Middle East and all of which wil inform her installation for MCBA.

The exhibition is documented in the following languages: D/F/E
Entrée gratuite

Jardin d’Hiver #1

18.06.2021 - 12.09.2021

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Curated by art critic and freelance curator Jill Gasparina, this show makes the principle of collage its own, featuring works by Francis Baudevin, Ligia Dias, Raquel Dias, Rosanne Kapela, Yoan Mudry, Gina Proenza, Denis Savary, Caroline Tschumi, Pierre Vadi, and the art spaces Circuit, Rats, Silicon Malley, Tunnel Tunnel, and Urgent Paradise.

The exhibition is documented in the following languages: D/F/E
Guided tours are offered in the following languages: F/E

Christian Boltanski. Relics and Monuments 1985–1996

02.07.2021 - 26.09.2021

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Following Les Suisses morts, the show Christian Boltanski (b. 1944) mounted at the Museum in 1993, MCBA acquired several pieces by the French artist as well as a number of artist’s books, which make up a significant part of his body of work. Donations and long-term loans have since expanded that initial collection; the result is a fine selection of works from the years 1985-1996 whose central theme is “the
cult of the dead, the living and the dead to come.”

The exhibition is documented in the following languages: D/F/E
Entrée gratuite

Unique et multiple. Recent Works from the BCV Art Collection

23.09.2021 - 09.01.2022

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An overview of a corporate collection that has followed the contemporary art scene in Vaud for a half century now. Under the direction of Catherine Othenin-Girard, curator of the BCV Art Collection, the show is a multifaceted approach that sheds light on current trends and experiments, drawing on acquisitions from the last 10 years, including works by Caroline Bachmann, Julian Charrière, Claudia Comte, Sylvain Croci-Torti, Philippe Decrauzat, Silvie Defraoui, etc.

The exhibition is documented in the following languages: D/F/E
Entrée gratuite

Francis Alÿs. As Long As I’m Walking

15.10.2021 - 16.01.2022

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This solo show devoted to Francis Alÿs (b. 1959) presents an overview of the artist’s work in video, painting, and drawing, with special emphasis on one of the central themes of his practice, the act of walking, from urban strolls to exploring territories and their borders. Among his recent works figures a selection from the series Children’s Games, in which the imaginary spaces of childhood join the artist’s
fictional spaces.

The exhibition is documented in the following languages: D/F/E
Guided tours are offered in the following languages: F/E

Aloïse

22.10.2021 - 23.01.2022

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In the 1960s, MCBA became interested in the work of the exceptional outsider artist Aloïse (1886–1964), a native of Vaud who had been committed to the Cery asylum in 1918. The show takes us into a world that is rich in symbols, erotic, and sumptuously filled with flowers, animals, emperors, queens, and opera singers.

The exhibition is documented in the following languages: D/F/E
Entrée gratuite