A word from the director

On 30 September 2009 the cantonal government chose the new site for the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, which has been located in the Palais de Rumine since 1906. It will be the locomotive buildings, an industrial construction dating from 1911 to the west of Lausanne station, to which it will be possible to adjoin a contemporary building.
The challenges this plan throws up are already clear: to build a museum that will satisfy all the safety and environmental standards in a fully operative railway zone; and to make the museum visible in a place that has been made invisible by the daily passage of tens of thousands of people.
The opportunities the site affords are equally apparent: in its position next to the station – which will also undergo transformation in the middle term – the museum will stand at the centre of a set of systems (not only of transport, but also of culture, heritage, knowledge, education and society) and will correspond exactly to our concept of a museum open on the world and to everyone.
To me the turntable at the entrance to the locomotive hall has a symbolic value: the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts will be a place for exchange and meeting: the encounter of all forms of art from all periods, of the past and the future, of local and unfamiliar cultures, of all generations of the public, of specialists and the simply curious, of the residents of Vaud and tourists.