Exhibitions
The Foundation regularly lends artworks for exhibitions organised in Switzerland and abroad.
Without its own exhibition space, the Foundation makes its collections visible through an open and dynamic lending policy. Its works are featured in most major exhibitions incorporating textile art, both in Switzerland and abroad. You will find a comprehensive list below.
Works on loan
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
Metamorphoses
The Toms Pauli Foundation is lending three antique tapestries to the Metamorphoses exhibition organised by the Rijksmuseum. Among them, two remarkable tapestries stand out for their exceptional state of preservation and their artistic and historical interest. They come from the tapestry series The Story of Apollo, also known as the Barberini Metamorphoses, and depict Latona transforming the peasants of Lycia into frogs and Apollo and Daphne. These two tapestries were woven in the workshops founded in Rome by Cardinal Francesco Barberini, nephew of Pope Urban VIII and a great lover of tapestry.
Works on loan
Art Genève
Dans le cadre de l’édition 2026 du Salon Art Genève, la Fondation Toms Pauli a participé à la sélection "Sur-mesure" consacrée à des œuvres et installations monumentales d’exception. Elle y a présenté l’œuvre spectaculaire de Jagoda Buić, Hommage à Pierre Pauli (1970–1971), témoin majeur de la force expressive et de l’ambition sculpturale de la création textile de la seconde moitié du XXᵉ siècle.
Works on loan
Lausanne, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts
The collection invites
Après avoir été exposé pendant près d'une année dans le parcours permanent du Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, le Concert laisse place à un autre trésor des collections de la Fondation Toms Pauli : une tapisserie bruxelloise du XVIIe siècle représentant Vespasien et Titus acclamés.
Works on loan
Paris, musée Bourdelle
Magdalena Abakanowicz, the Thread of Existence
Following presentations in London, Lausanne, Oslo, Warsaw, and more recently in Tilburg and ’s-Hertogenbosch, the Musée Bourdelle in Paris will host a major exhibition devoted to Magdalena Abakanowicz. Through the loan of eight significant works—reliefs and spatial forms—Fondation Toms Pauli contributes to the curatorial ambition of emphasising the sculptural dimension of the Polish artist’s oeuvre. The Paris exhibition is staged in the home-workshop of Antoine Bourdelle, sculptor and drawing teacher at the Gobelins manufactory, whose pupil Maria Łaszkiewicz enabled Abakanowicz to realise her first large-format tapestries for the Lausanne International Tapestry Biennials.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication in French.
Commissioned
Lausanne, mudac Musée Cantonal de Design et d'Arts Appliqués Contemporains
Times in Tapestry: Goshka Macuga x Grayson Perry x Mary Toms
On the occasion of their respective twenty-fifth anniversaries, Fondation Toms Pauli and mudac explore tapestry as a vector of storytelling and propaganda by presenting a selection of exceptional works, remarkable both for their expressive power and their monumental scale. Through a dialogue between baroque wall hangings from the Mary Toms Collection and contemporary tapestries by Goshka Macuga and Grayson Perry, Times in Tapestry presents the medium as a mirror of political and social intentions, and as a tool for critical commentary. By confronting ancient and contemporary works, Times in Tapestry highlights the timeless power of tapestry: through its rich visual language it has the capacity to convey complex messages and spark reflection on universal issues.
A publication, with contributions by eight authors who address tapestry as a narrative medium from different perspectives, accompanies the exhibition. It is presented in a boxed set together with 23 loose-leaf plates of the monumental works displayed at Times in Tapestry: Goshka Macuga x Grayson Perry x Mary Toms.
Times in Tapestry: Goshka Macuga x Grayson Perry x Mary Toms
Works on loan
Tilburg, TextilMuseum
Magdalena Abakanowicz - Everything is made of fiber
Die Fondation Toms Pauli besitzt den größten Bestand an Werken von Magdalena Abakanowicz außerhalb Polens und freut sich, dass mehrere Wandteppiche, weiche Skulpturen und Installationen der Künstlerin in bemerkenswerten Ausstellungen gezeigt werden, wie z. B. derzeit im Textilmuseum Tilburg mit acht historischen und unverzichtbaren Leihgaben.
Abakanowicz - Everything is made of fiber - TextielMuseum
Works on loan
Lausanne, mudac Musée cantonal de design et d'arts appliqués contemporains
Soleil.s Solar Biennale 2
At the heart of an exhibition that brings together designers, artists, curators and scientists to explore the issue of solar energy, a rooster by Jean Lurçat heralds the sunbeams of a new dawn.
Works on loan, Collaboration
Zürich, Museum für Gestaltung (Ausstellungstrasse)
Manifestes textiles - du Bauhaus à la soft sculpture
Die Ausstellung Textile Manifeste lässt Materialien und Techniken miteinander in Dialog treten und stellt das Textilmedium als «umfassende sinnliche Erfahrung». Die Fondation Toms Pauli stellt elf Leihgaben zur Verfügung, darunter Stickereien von Lissy Funk und Werke von Helen Frances Gregor, Kazimiera Gidaszewska, Lia Cook, Shigeki Fukumoto und Sonia Delaunay, die sich alle auf unterschiedliche Weise mit der Textilkunst in ihrer ganzen Vielfalt auseinandersetzen.
Textile Manifeste – Von Bauhaus bis Soft Sculpture | MfGZ
Works on loan, Collaboration
Lausanne, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts
Alice Pauli. Gallerist, Collector, Art Patron
A prominent figure on the Lausanne arts scene and an amazing personality, Alice Pauli was closely connected with tapestry and with Fondation Toms Pauli. In this major exhibition that pays tribute to her, those special connections are illustrated in the Fondation’s loans to the MCBA. Among the more than 130 pieces on display, there are ten works by artists, Alice Pauli had either supported or was close friends with, such as Jean Lurçat, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Jagoda Buić, Wojciech Sadley, Maria Łaszkiewicz, Sheila Hicks and Mariette Rousseau-Vermette.
Alice Pauli. Gallerist, Collector, Art Patron – MCBA
Works on loan, Collaboration
Paris, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain
Olga de Amaral
The Paisaje de calicanto y rocas tapestry by the Colombian artist Olga de Amaral, is presented in a minimalist setting, playing on the building’s transparency and the garden outside. Loaned by Fondation Toms Pauli for this ongoing, highly successful retrospective exhibition, the tapestry is a perfect representation of the poetic universe of this internationally acclaimed major textile artist.