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

Kiki Smith. Hearing You with My Eyes

Laurence Schmidlin (dir.), with essays by Amelia Jones, Lisa Le Feuvre et Laurence Schmidlin. A coedition by the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne & Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich, 2020, fr./en., 192 p., 126 ill.

CHF 39.-

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Tom Burr
Extrospective: Works 1994 – 2006

The first reference monograph in a bilingual (fr./en.) 160-page edition published by JRP|Ringier, Zurich, 2006. The book includes a preface by Yves Aupetitallot, previously unpublished texts by George Baker, Stuart Comer, Florence Derieux and Cerith Wyn Evans, and an interview with Tom Burr.

CHF 60.-

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Visions du déluge

With texts by Rémi Cariel, Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, Maria Susana Seguin and Sylvie Wuhrmann, co-published by MCBA, Lausanne / Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris, 2007, fr., 128 p.

CHF 46.-

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