Nestled in the heart of Geneva’s Old Town, the Museum of Art and History ranks among Switzerland’s largest museums. Boasting a collection of around 650,000 objects spanning applied arts, fine arts, and archaeology across five floors, the museum embraces a dynamic and innovative approach to showcase its treasures through unexpected exhibitions. Annually, it hosts approximately ten temporary exhibitions, frequently inviting contemporary artists to contribute. The museum organizes a variety of surprising events, including yoga classes in the galleries and after-work parties.
The MAH showcases Tonutopie, an innovative installation by German artist Hans-Walter Müller, a trailblazer in inflatable structures. This large, transparent, and habitable sphere, nestled within Vincent Lamouroux’s La Passerelle, offers a unique sensory experience. It delves into the contrasts between the fluidity of inflatable structures and the rigidity of traditional architecture, providing visitors with a fresh perspective on space.
Artists Daniel Dewar and Grégory Gicquel present a large-scale installation conceived as a traversable architecture that reconfigures the museum courtyard into a mutable living environment. Seven works dialog with sculpture, and two pieces were created specifically to engage the lapidary collection and the Pierre-aux-Dames megalith. Using carved stone surfaces, constructed siphons and modular plaster and resin elements, the project explores material metamorphosis, bodily presence and the shifting relations between monumentality and domestic scale.
Opening: Thursday 16 July, 18:30
This exhibition explores the careers of Édouard Naville, Switzerland’s pioneering Egyptologist, and his wife Marguerite Naville, whose contributions alongside him are now recognised in their own right. Through archival documents, excavation records and pharaonic objects, the presentation illuminates their archaeological practice and Marguerite’s role, while situating their work within the political, religious and humanitarian commitments that shaped scholarly life at the turn of the twentieth century.
In French and in English.
John M Armleder presents an interchange-based exhibition that foregrounds objects drawn from students’ suitcases. Through object-based works and subtle interventions, the show probes modes of observation, intimacy and collective memory. Personal belongings are rearranged as visual prompts that evoke histories, pedagogy and everyday cinematics. The artist’s restrained interventions invite reflection on how small domestic items circulate meanings and facilitate encounters, revealing how private narratives surface within a communal field of attention.
This class blends dynamic yoga practices with functional conditioning, emphasizing breath, alignment and mobility. Participants work through flowing sequences and targeted strength exercises to improve posture, flexibility and core stability. The session examines movement principles and sequencing strategies that support sustainable progress and injury prevention. It is preceded by a short presentation of an artwork, offering a cultural frame for embodied practice.
In French.
Directed by Leonardo Piana with the collective Bottega Hospites, Divertimento is a performance-opera for voice and live electronics that draws on Tiepolo’s drawings, the myth of Orpheus and the fate of a monumental Canova statue. Its staging weaves vocal textures and electronic sonorities, creating a meditative atmosphere that reflects on endings, the persistence of art and the afterlife of love. Intimate yet monumental, the piece invites sustained listening and visual contemplation.
Culture, curated weekly.
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