Plateforme 10

Plateforme 10

This new cultural platform will bring together by 2021 the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée de l’Elysée, the MUDAC, as well as the Toms Pauli and Félix Vallotton Foundations. In other words, you will find in the same museum hub photography, fine arts, fibre arts and design. Plateforme 10 is intended to be a genuine living area. Fourteen outside arcades invite to discovery even without entering one of the museums. The street furniture allows people to come and relax, whether to read a book or admire the buildings’ architecture.

Why Plateforme 10?

There’s always an explication to everything. The name Plateforme 10 wasn’t chosen by chance. The word “Plateforme” refers to the proximity of the station, as well as the idea of bringing together several artistic disciplines in the same location. Number 10 completes the nine platforms the train station actually has. And if you look at the logo closely, you’ll see that the zero has a slash across it, representing the turntable that rotated the locomotives in the desired direction and that we can see in front of the MCBA.

Lausanne Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts

It’s happening! The first museum of this new arts quarter is open! The inaugural exhibition of the MCBA (aka the Lausanne Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts) is set up in the Plateforme 10 brand-new building and has welcomed its first visitors.

The building itself is a work of art in its own right. Straight lines sometimes intersected by curved ones, a blend of textures and perfect brightness! We love the lobby that reflects the historical presence of the former locomotive shed.

Plateforme 10 is inaugurated with the Museum of Fine Arts and its exhibition “Atlas. A Cartography of Donations”. Across 3,200 square metres, three levels and 14 rooms, close to 400 works are displayed, largely from the MCBA’s own collection.

Instead of the traditional chronological exhibition, the Lausanne MCBA decided to structure “Atlas. A Cartography of Donations” around ten themes. For each theme, contemporary works flirt with classical ones, so that you can see in the same room paintings placed opposite installations, sculptures or videos. It’s an audacious and surprising confrontation of ancient and modern works of art. Among the various themes that make up the exhibition, there is pain, world map, music and flux, to name a few.

This dynamic hanging really makes the exhibition interesting. We just don’t tire of it! We’re eager to see what the next theme, the next room has in store!

As for the works themselves, the exhibition embraces just as many international artists (Zao Wou Ki, Soulages, Kiefer, Dubuffet, Balthus…) as local ones (Calame, Vallotton, Alice Bailly, Maya Rochat…). A noble mix that highlights the magnitude and diversity of the MCBA’s collection.

This artistic melting pot makes the exhibition attractive to all. You’re bound to find a work that speaks to you and moves you particularly. As for us, we fell in love for the works of Alice Bailly and Vallotton, and the bookshop, packed with beautiful books. What do you particularly like?

2020, and what next?

The upcoming exhibitions are already planned at the MCBA. In February, we can visit “Under the skin”, an exhibition that focuses on Viennese artists from the dawn of the twentieth century (14.02.20  – 24.05.20: Vienna 1900, from Klimt to Schiele and Kokoschka).

The opening of the Lausanne MCBA and its exhibition “Atlas. A Cartography of Donations” are but the beginning of a beautiful adventure for Plateforme 10, as the Musée de l’Elysée and the MUDAC will join the museum hub in 2021.