Library

Hours and consultation

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.

Winter closure: 22.12.2025 – 4.1.2026

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

Esther Shalev-Gerz
Entre l’écoute et la parole / Between Telling and Listening

Bilingual monographic reference catalogue, edited by Nicole Schweizer, with texts by Nora Alter, Georges Didi-Huberman, Annika Wik, James E. Young. Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne & JRP | Ringier, Zurich, 2012, fr./en., 160 p., 155 ill.

CHF 60.-

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À fleur de peau. Vienne 1900, de Klimt à Schiele et Kokoschka

With texts by Catherine Lepdor and Camille Lévêque-Claudet, curators, and Marian Bisanz-Prakken, Claude Cernuschi, Matthias Haldemann, Astrid Kury, Christian Witt-Dörring (fr.), 240 p., 247 ill., fr. Paris, Éditions Hazan, 2020.

With the support of the Friends of the Museum and the Österreichisches Kulturforum, Bern.

CHF 52.60

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Thalassa! Thalassa! L’imaginaire de la mer

Danielle Chaperon and Catherine Lepdor, Octopus Editions, 2024, fr., 208 p., 187 ill. ISBN: 978-2-900314-48-7

CHF 29.-

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