Photo Elysée designed by the Portuguese Aires Mateus, is part of the new museum complex Platform 10 near the Lausanne train station

I have not yet been to Lausanne to discover the new Museum quarter designed by the Portuguese firm Aires Mateus, Plateforme 10, near the train station, but from my visit last year, I know what an attractive group of buildings it is. Tatyana Franck, who used to run Photo Elysée, the superb photography museum, is gone to New York where she is President of FIAF, French Institute Alliance Française. She was recently replaced by Nathalie Haschendorfer, formerly head of Musée des Beaux Arts de Locle, near Neuchâtel. “Train Zug Treno Tren” was the obvious title for the first exhibition linking the three museums.

Tatyana Franck left Lausanne for New York last February

For the last eight years, Tatyana Franck has energetically modernized the Fondation de l’Elysée, now called Photo Elysée, which moved from its ravishing 18 th century house overlooking the lake where Mme de Staël and Benjamin Franklin used to sojourn, to the new building by the train station in Lausanne. She started there at 30, and brought in three new collections, the Sabine Weiss fund, Jan Groover’s and Olivier Föllni’s. Her aim was to prepare the dialogue between all forms of art which will be the core mission of the new Platform 10 center. Uniquely linked with two cantonal museums, the mudac (for design) and the MCBA (for Arts), Photo Elysée will be the International attraction with its fabulous collections.

Nathalie Herschdorfer, new director of Photo Elysée, has organized fifty exhibitions at le Locle Arts museum

The exhibition called “Train Zug Treno Tren” (until September 25) at the three venues under the theme of Crossed destinies, will speak to everyone’s imagination. From Gustave Caillebotte to Giorgio de Chirico and Leonor Fini, 60 masterpieces are shown at the Museum of Arts. At mudac, strange objects linked to the railway and at Photo Elysée, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Martine Franck, Pol Burri, Bernard Plossu, Charlie Chaplin… will be featured on the theme of the train.

A catalog is published on the three exhibitions if you cannot travel to Lausanne.

Philip Giegel, Grandfey Fribourg Bridge, 1983© Bundesamt für Kultur, Bern

At Fondation de l’Hermitage, all the way up the hill, Achille Laugé will represent “Neo impressionism in the light of the South”, until October 30. This friend of Bourdelle and Henri Martin was born in l’Aude near Carcassonne, in France, and studied to become a chemist in Toulouse. But he soon attended courses at Ecole des Beaux Arts and became a post impressionist artist. I had never heard of him and am curious to discover his work very soon.

Achille Laugé, Tree in bloom, 1893

50 mns away by train, at Fondation Gianadda, in Martigny, Henri Cartier-Bresson is the guest star of the summer and 2h30 away at Fondation Beyeler, in Basel, Mondrian is shown to celebrate the museums’s 25 th anniversary.