Library

Hours and consultation

Summer closure

  • From 4.8.2025 to 24.8.2025 included

Winter closure

  • From 22.12.2025 to 4.1.2026 included

Tuesday-Friday: 2pm – 6pm (Except public holidays)

On-site consultation, on request:

Free access:

  • A selection of books about artists represented in the collection, in connection with current exhibitions or about a museum’s life and activities; periodicals about fine arts.

Contact

Bibliothèque du Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts
Place de la Gare 16
1003 Lausanne
bibliotheque.mcba@plateforme10.ch
+41 21 318 44 50

Art history, artists, museology, the art market, cultural mediation, conservation, private collections…

The MCBA library offers a specialised collection of materials on the visual arts from the 19th century to today. The collection covers painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, video, and new media, with special emphasis on the artists who are part of the museum’s collections, artists from Vaud and the arts in the canton. Some 40,000 items (exhibition and museum catalogues, monographs on artists, specialised periodicals, auction house catalogues) are available for on-site consultation.

The library also conserves the archives of both MCBA and the Association des Amis du musée. It maintains as well the Balthus Archives, which are on long-term loan to the museum, and the library of the Toms Pauli Foundation.

To download (in french)

Resources

The complete catalogue of the MCBA's library: search here

Links

Searching the archives...

1989: Pierre Kuenzi requests access to the MCBA library

MCBA Publications

Regarde, elles parlent !
15 œuvres du musée te racontent leur histoire

Ces récits présentent quinze œuvres de la collection du MCBA, de François Dubois à Kader Attia, à l’appui de leurs reproductions et d’illustrations inédites de Fausto Gilberti.
Public : dès 8 ans

Gisèle Comte, Sandrine Moeschler, Laurence Schmidlin et Deborah Strebel

(fr.), 92 p., 15 ill. en couleurs et 15 ill. originales de Fausto Gilberti, 15 x 21 cm

Coédition : Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne / La Joie de lire, Genève

ISBN : 978-2-88908-489-0

CHF 19,90.-

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Emily Jacir. We Ate the Wind

Nicole Schweizer (ed.), with a text by Julia Bryan-Wilson, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, 2023, Coll. Espace Projet, no 4, fr./en., 40 p., 20 ill.

CHF 5.-

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Silvie Defraoui. Le tremblement des certitudes

Laurence Schmidlin (ed.), Silvie Defraoui. Le tremblement des certitudes, with an essay by Laurence Schmidlin and a preface by Juri Steiner, Copublication by Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne and Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich, 2023, en./fr./ge., 120 p., 76 ill.

CHF 35.-

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