Agenda

Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) embodies talent, grace and commitment and she is one of the greatest actresses in the history of film. The exhibition is based on three themes. With its Audrey Hepburn collection, the museum will guide the visitor through an retrospective on the actress’s life and work by photographic portraits, clips from her films, objects, the originals of famous magazine covers and stories.

A selection of renowned Swiss and international glass artists present their work. The exhibition shows a representative cross-section of the diversity of contemporary glass art. In a dialogue, traditional techniques come together with new approaches in glass art.

The exhibition (Un temps de Papier) presents more than 80 works by the artist Viviane Fontaine. The artist accompanies paper from traditional production to artistic creation. In harmony with her environment, the artist follows the paper production process and makes a connection between nature, art and life. The diversity of the plants, their history and their therapeutic qualities are the main aspects that guide her work.

The five towers presented in the exhibition – chosen for their representativeness, their aesthetic qualities and the formal beauty of their archival documents – are the works of five architects who imagined the 21stcentury well before the advent of the year 2000: Jean Tschumi, René Deléchat, Alphonse Laverrière, Hugo Buscaglia and André Gaillard. Whereas the towers were systematically decried during the 20thcentury, today they are the necessary components of a responsible town planning in search of sustainable solutions. The exhibition displays drawings, plans, photographs and an unreleased film of the construction of the Tour d’Ivoire in Montreux (Ivory Tower), as well as some magnificent drawings of Le Corbusier’s skyscraper project for the Marine district in Algiers.

50 000 years of local history in the heart of Europe is the theme of the permanent exhibition at the Laténium. The exhibition presents the different stages of human evolution, from the present day back to the times of the Neanderthal man. The first human beings settling in Switzerland date from 50 000 years ago. Then followed the glacial ambience, 25,000 years of ice age. As human societies started to constitute their first permanent settlements and lake-dwellings. The Celts, the Gallo-Romans and the Middle Ages are the next focus of the presentation.

Traditionally, woodcarving is a male affair, but the number of female woodcarvers is constantly increasing. The exhibition shows selected works by eleven women artists from Switzerland and Southern Germany.

The hunt has always meant a lot more than the simple procurement of food or the defence against food competitors. Huntable animals belong by far to the earliest motifs in painting and sculpture. The exhibition reflects on the hunt, on hunters and the hunted, on how they are perceived and depicted from antiquity up to today. It addresses the mythological superstructure from Artemis and Diana to Saint Hubertus. It illustrates the meaning of trophies, asks after the wilderness as a place of longing. The exhibition reflects the different views and manifestations from classical antiquity to the present day.

The exhibition René Char. Sources et chemins de la poésie (Wellsprings and Ways of Poetry) follows the poet René Char (1907-1988) over the course of some thirty years, from Le soleil des eaux (1949) and Les matinaux (1950), to the collections La nuit talismanique (1972) and Aromates chasseurs (1975). The show is divided into four chronological sections that are organized around the works and their manuscripts, as well as photographs, prints, drawings, and fragments that led to the birth of complete poems. It also brings to life the places where Char lived, while several rare books reveal the poet’s friendships and dialogues with contemporary artists.

The two glaciers of Grinderwald are among the most researched glaciers worldwide. Taking a closer look at the glaciers one can see their retreat. In the 16th and 17th centuries the focus of public attention was more on the dangers of ice masses. After 1700 they began to be regarded as a curious phenomenon. In  the nineteenth century and by the rise of tourism they became first idealized and later  an integral part of the alpine landscape. Since the 17th century the two glaciers have also been a popular subject for artists. The exhibition “Keinesmehr“ or ‚no more sea of ice‘ consists oft wo parts. One part provides scientific background of the glacier and the climate change. The other part shows the most famous paintings of  the two glaciers.

Following the exhibition on Windows (Fenêtres) in 2013, the Fondation continues its exploration of major themes in western iconography. The theme of this exhibition features a selection of nearly 140 artworks, representing 500 years of the history of art and a diverse range of artistic forms, from painting to installation, sculpture, prints, drawings, photography and video. The masterpieces reflect the sustained interest artists have shown in shadow, from self-portraits (Rembrandt, Delacroix) to explorations of perspective (Bandinelli, de Hooch), chiaroscuro (Cambiaso, Jordaens, Wright of Derby) and the dramatic landscape of the Romantics (Friedrich, Carus, Bendz). Highpoints of the exhibition include shadow in the work of the Impressionists (Monet) and post-Impressionists (Cross, Sorolla), and a section bringing together the disturbing, paradoxical uses of shadow in the work of the symbolists (Degouve de Nuncques, Spilliaert), expressionists (Munch), surrealists (Dalí, Magritte, Ernst) and the New Objectivity (Schad, Stoecklin). The use of shadow in modern and contemporary art is reflected in iconic works by Picasso, Warhol, Boltanski and Kosuth, while video artists (Acconci, Otth, Maisonnasse) reinterpret the great founding myths linking shadow to art and knowledge, from Plato to Pliny. The exhibition is enhanced by a large photographic section, revealing that photography too has its constant focus on shadow.