Shipwrecks
15 May 2000 to 31 March 2001
Our beautiful Lake Geneva, the blue Lake Geneva, also has a dark side. Its elements can be extremely violent and destructive, as in Hurricane Lothar... The exhibition opens with an extraordinary and extremely rare object from the shores of Lake Geneva: an authentic ex-voto, dated 1640, from the Confrérie de St-André des gens du lac, which bears witness to this struggle against the elements. From the 1830s onwards, it was another relief organisation that took over the role of solidarity: the Rescue Societies. On 8 and 9 July 2000, the great international festival of the SISL (Société Internationale de Sauvetage du Léman) was held in Nyon, bringing together all the sections of Lake Geneva, both Swiss and French. A special tribute is therefore paid here to these societies and in particular to the one in Nyon, one of the five founding sections of the SISL in 1885. In the first part of the exhibition, the striking photographs of Jean-Claude Beucher, a native of Lausanne but of Breton origin, also show us the strength of the lake in anger...