Library

Hours and consultation

Tuesday-Friday: 2pm – 6pm

Special closures on Friday 29.03, Thursday 9.05 and Thursday 1.08

Summer closure: 6.08 to 23.08 2024

Winter closure: 24.12.2024 to 10.01.2025

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

Immersion. Les origines : 1949 – 1969

Immersion. The Origins: 1949-1969 is the first book to trace the rise of immersive art, an approach that addresses all the visitor’s senses in a 360° experience. Featuring pioneering works by twenty-three artists, from Lucio Fontana to Judy Chicago, the present catalogue explores the beginnings of a major form of artistic expression that heralded augmented reality. Essays by Giuliana Bruno, Choghakate Kazarian, and Camille Lévêque-Claudet examine immersion, its history, strategies for involving the public in the work of art itself, and questioning of the exhibition space. The book includes both period documents and an exceptional selection of photo illustrations.

Choghakate Kazarian and Camille Lévêque-Claudet (ed.), Immersion. Les origines/The Origins: 1949-1969, Lausanne, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Paris, Hazan, 2023, 152 p., 106 ill. (Fr./Eng.)

CHF 60.90

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Yersin dessinateur. Quittez mines grise, le printemps est là!

Avec des textes de Sébastien Dizerens, commissaire de l’exposition.

Lausanne, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, 2020. Coll. Espace Focus, n°1.

(fr.)

CHF 5.–

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Reliques et monuments. Œuvres de Christian Boltanski

With essays by Bernard Fibicher

Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, 2021. Coll. Espace Focus, no 3

FR, 48 pages, 30 ill.

CHF 8.–

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