Exhibitions

With more than 300 glass animals, from the collection of distinguished art historian and Honorary Director of the Louvre Pierre Rosenberg, and pieces from his donation to the musée du Grand Siècle, the exhibition highlights the delicacy of Murano glass animals while questioning our ambivalent relationship with living beings.

The exhibition, unique in Switzerland, retraces Takahata’s career, from Heidi, Girl of the Alps (1974) to Grave of the Fireflies (1988) and The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (2013), through his notebooks and storyboards, original drawings, cels, film and video excerpts and audiovisual documents.

Inferno & Paradiso is an immersive installation created by Alfredo Jaar (b. 1956), a fixture in the international contemporary art world. In this groundbreaking project, Jaar posits that the onslaught of images of human suffering is dulling our sensitivity.

Twenty press photographers from around the world were asked to select two images from their respective portfolios – the most painful one they had taken and a hopeful one. Through these images, shown as slide projections, the photographers take us on a journey through heaven and hell, just as Virgil guided Dante in The Divine Comedy.

This exhibition, co-produced with the cultural association On The Move, was developed for the Cortona On The Move international photography festival.

Hannah Darabi, winner of the 2025 Prix Elysée, delves into Iran’s popular dance scene with Why Don’t You Dance?

By combining photographs, videos and archival pieces, the artist shows how, depending on the social and political context, people – especially members of the Iranian diaspora – can use dancing as a way of expressing their identity and freeing themselves. Inspired by the autobiography of Mahvash, a leading Iranian cabaret figure of the 1950s, and by karaoke evenings at the Cabaret Tehran in Los Angeles, Darabi links past and present dance practices.

The Prix Elysée is an award created by Photo Elysée and Parmigiani Fleurier in an exclusive partnership.

For his show in the Espace Projet, Lucas Erin presents a new series of works that explore the garden, its connection to the seasons and climatic variations, its changing meanings across different latitudes, its particular economy, as well as its place in specific histories and temporalities.

A scientist and musician by training, the Lausanne native Charles Blanc-Gatti (1890-1966) was a self-taught painter and filmmaker, as well as a major player in the ‘musicalisation’ of the visual arts. His work places us at the very heart of modernity’s progressive utopias.

Le MCBA présente la première exposition monographique consacrée à l’artiste étatsunien Ted Joans (1928-2003), auteur d’une œuvre foisonnante et inclassable, où se mêlent les influences du surréalisme, du jazz, du Black Power et du panafricanisme.

Photographers have trained their lenses on animals since the early days of the medium. In Animal model, Photo Elysée examines how their images have informed our attitude toward animals – how we love them, use them or seek to protect them.

The exhibition, organized by theme, invites visitors to reflect upon the role of animals in our visual culture and, ultimately, to question the borders between the human and animal worlds. The photographs on display consist of both major works and anonymous images, from the 19th through the 21st centuries.