Past exhibitions

MCBA is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in Switzerland devoted to the work of Babi Badalov. Both writing and drawing, the artist’s visual poetry explores the political and poetic possibilities of language.

With fourteen immersive environments by a range of artists, from Lucio Fontana to Judy Chicago, Immersion. The Origins: 1949-1969 is the first exhibition to look at an emerging practice that was to become one of the major forms of expression starting in the 1990s.

MCBA is pleased to celebrate Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, a wonderful eyewitness to the Belle Époque in Paris. The show features for the first time an extensive group of works from the Paul and Tina Stohler Donation.

For the second exhibition featuring the BCV Art Collection in MCBA’s special Espace Projet gallery, four artists are showing new installations and other pieces in a play of correspondences and dialogue around their respective practices

For its first major show at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts at the museum’s Plateforme 10 address, the Fondation Toms Pauli invites visitors to rediscover the startling work of Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930 – 2017), a pioneer of textile art and a major artist of 20th-century sculpture.

In the 1970s and 1980s, two highly productive art world figures agreed to set up art exchanges between Lausanne and Buenos Aires. They were René Berger, the director of MCBA, and Jorge Glusberg, the director of CAYC (Centro de Arte y Comunicación).

Drawing on rituals such as dances, processions and games, Emily Jacir's film installation for the MCBA traces how space, community and memory can be claimed.

Questioning our relationship to images and the way they mediatize reality, the show Silvie Defraoui. The Trembling of Certitudes honors the artist by offering an in-depth look at the last thirty years of work by this major figure of Switzerland’s art scene.

Curated by Simon Würsten Marin, the second iteration of Jardin d’Hiver (Winter Garden), the biennial show devoted to the region’s contemporary art scene, will explore questions of change, instability, and vulnerability, while showcasing the variety seen throughout the artists’ modes of expression.