Collection
History
The museum’s 5000-strong collection includes almost 400 paintings, around 100 sculptures, several objects of applied art and a remarkable number of prints, posters, drawings and watercolours by Swiss and international artists from the 17th to the 21st century. It is the fruit of over a hundred years of enrichment thanks to generous donations, purchases and prestigious deposits.
The renovation plans of 2011 to 2014 required the relocation of the entire collection, which provided an opportunity to take stock of it and, at the same time, to retrace its history. Until the 1950s, the collection consisted mainly of paintings and sculptures by Swiss and regional artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, many of them deposited at the museum on behalf of the Swiss Confederation and the Gottfried Keller Foundation. Among the artists represented are Albert Anker, the Barraud brothers, Emile Chambon, Charles Clément, Lucien Grounauer, Gustave Jeanneret, Edouard Jeanmaire, Charles L’Eplattenier, Carl Moll, Paul-Théophile Robert, Léopold Robert, Otto and Benjamin Vautier.
In the second half of the 20th century, under the impetus of curators Marcel Bergeon, Renée Faessler and Charles Chautems, acquisitions consisted mainly of prints, and noteworthy collections were built up. The print collection currently contains over a thousand works by Swiss and international artists such as Adam Appel, Armleder, Auberjonois, Bonnard, Corot, Disler, Evrard, Giacometti, Francisco Goya, Hartung, Jacot, Jaquet, Le Corbusier, Luginbühl, Matisse, Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec and Villon, to name but a few.
Every three years since 1992, the MBAL has organized a major event dedicated to contemporary print art. The museum’s aim is to encourage reflection on printed art and to support the means of artists who use this medium to express themselves.
Today, the exhibition strategy of the permanent collection has deviated from the traditional method of confining it to an allotted room, and has evolved to make it interact with the temporary exhibitions. A selection of works is put forward for each new exhibition to echo the main themes of the current temporary exhibition, thus creating a dialogue between big names in contemporary art, young talents and artists from the museum’s collection. 2023 marks a record year for the exhibition of the museum’s collection, where over 127 works were presented to the public as part of Le plaisir du texte and animal instinct/instinct animal.
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Acquisition policy
The acquisition policy of the Société des beaux-arts et du musée du Locle is based on several criteria. Priority is given to Swiss artistic productions, as well as the works of artists featured in temporary exhibitions. A potential acquisition is evaluated according to its artistic value, its relevance to the museum’s collections, its state and condition of preservation, its documentary contribution, its inclusion in a temporary exhibition, its importance within the history of art, and its historical and heritage value.
The MBAL is also sensitive to gender equality. However, with only 17% women and 83% men in the collection, it has to be said that the museum’s collection is a long way from achieving gender parity. In order to remedy this inequality, the MBAL has undertaken, over the next few years, to acquire works of art produced by women until equality is achieved.
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Publishing the collection online
Since 2024, the MBAL has been working on putting a selection of significant works from the collection online, to make it accessible and available for consultation to as many people as possible.
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