Located in a grand neo-classical building in Parc des Bastions, the Bibliothèque de Genève is the University of Geneva library. The library hosts events such as exhibitions, conferences, talks, and workshops. Noteworthy among its regular programs is the December exhibition on the history of the Escalade, and the recurring event “Les jeudis midi à l’affiche,” featuring guest speakers discussing graphic posters from the library’s collection.
Historian Patrick Auderset, drawing on a poster collection donated by the Unia trade union in 2022, presents research on labour mobilizations in Geneva from the 1920s to the 1990s.
The lecture examines how posters functioned as tools of communication and collective identity, exploring visual strategies, recurring motifs and the relationship between graphic design and labour politics. Auderset reveals how images shaped public memory and activism.
In French.
Art critic and exhibition curator Anne Bourrassé shares research from her book Les Refusées – Les artistes femmes n’existent pas, examining the place of women in contemporary art. Drawing on statistics, artist pairings, testimonies, and activist experiences, she explores how gender, class, and race hierarchies have shaped art history and continue to influence it today.
In French.
Tiffany Sarre, cultural mediator, leads the French-language guided visit and provides informed commentary on the library’s collections and institutional mission. Her role focuses on public mediation and interpretation.
This tour examines the library’s evolution from its origins to the present, exploring how collecting, preservation and transmission shape cultural memory. Participants investigate curatorial practices, archival missions and the institution’s role in sustaining Geneva’s heritage through close observation and guided explanation.
In French.
Asile.ch and the Centre de la photographie Genève bring together specialists in visual culture to examine how asylum and migration can be represented without reinforcing stereotypes. The discussion explores the power of images to shape public understanding, while considering how to promote more dignified and diverse visual narratives. Speakers include Anthony Anex of Keystone-ATS, Artan Islamaj of Institut Nouvelle Suisse, Nora Teylouni of Le Temps, and a representative from Médecins Sans Frontières. The session is moderated by Danaé Panchaud and Elodie Feijoo.
In French.
Isabella di Lenardo, EPFL, presents work on integrating heterogeneous corpora into spatiotemporal datasets, showing practical methods to convert disparate sources into structured interfaces for research and analysis.
The talk examines how AI and prompting transform these datasets into interactive interfaces for querying, exploration, and knowledge generation, addressing challenges in interoperability, temporal modelling, and user-directed discovery to reveal new insights across humanities datasets.
This exhibition presents a selection of illustrations created by painter Édouard Elzingre for two landmark publications by Pastor Alexandre Guillot, La Nuit de l’Escalade and Le Siècle de la Réforme. Through vivid historical imagery, the works revisit the dramatic events of 1602 and the formation of Geneva’s civic identity. Blending narrative detail with patriotic resonance, the drawings illuminate how memory, legend, and visual storytelling helped shape a lasting communal tradition.
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Culture, curated weekly.
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