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.

Resources

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

Links

MCBA Publications

Jean-Luc Manz. Peintures 1984 – 2010

Bilingual monographic reference catalogue, fr./ge., richly illustrated, with contributions by Catherine Othenin-Girard, Hans Rudolf Reust and Nicole Schweizer. Zurich, Editions Fink 2010.

CHF 48.-

Order

Atlas. Cartographie du don

Bernard Fibicher (ed.), Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, 2019, fr., 64.

CHF 28.–

Order

Yves Mettler, My Flowers aren’t always hiding secrets

Published to coincide with the “Pont Bessières” exhibition at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne and the “Yves Mettler. MANOR-Kunstpreis St.Gallen 2006” at the Kunstmuseum St.Gallen. 2006, fr./ge., 72 p.

CHF 36.-

Order