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

Tom Burr
Extrospective : Works 1994 – 2006

Première monographie de référence en édition bilingue (français/ anglais) de 160 pages publiée par JRP|Ringier, Zurich. Cet ouvrage comprend une préface de Yves Aupetitallot, des textes inédits de George Baker, Stuart Comer, Florence Derieux et Cerith Wyn Evans ainsi qu’un entretien avec Tom Burr.

CHF 60.-

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Emily Jacir. We Ate the Wind

Nicole Schweizer (ed.), Emily Jacir. We Ate the Wind, with a text by Julia Bryan-Wilson (FR/ANGL), 40 p., 20 ill., Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, 2023 (coll. Espace Projet, no 4)

CHF 5.-

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Ça bouge au musée !

This book encourages toddlers to develop their sense of touch and fine motor skills by using their fingers to follow a line through works in the collection from the 19th to the 21st century.
Public: up to 2 years

Gisèle Comte

(fr.), 20 p., 14 colour illustrations, 16 x 16 cm
Co-publication: Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne / La Joie de lire, Geneva

ISBN : 978-2-88908-490-6

CHF 14.-

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