Musee des Beaux-Arts de La Chaux-de-Fonds. The Musée des Beaux-Arts de La Chaux-de-Fonds is an art museum located in the town of La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland. Founded in 1864, it moved in 1926 to its current Art Deco-style building, designed by artists René Chapallaz and Charles L'Eplattenier. It houses works by regional and international artists. The quarterly temporary exhibition program is oriented towards contemporary Swiss and international art punctuated by exhibitions of a more historical nature. The permanent collection consists of more than 7,000 works. The Museum of Fine Arts of La Chaux-de-Fonds was created on April 8, 1864, by the Society of Friends of the Arts of Neuchâtel, section of La Chaux-de-Fonds, today called Society of Friends of the Museum of Fine Arts. The history of this association merges with that of the museum, which became an institution of the City in 1985. It has since been managed by a commission appointed by the City Council. The Society of Friends of the Museum of Fine Arts, for its part, devotes its resources to the acquisition of works and to the activities and organization of the Biennale. The aims of the Society of Friends of the Arts were, through the acquisition of works of art and the organization of exhibitions, to develop the artistic culture of the region and to make art useful to industry. Until the inauguration of the current building, in Art Deco style, in 1926, the collection was on permanent display from 1877 in a room at the Industrial College, then from 1910, in the converted attic of the Hôtel des poste from the city. Long focused on Swiss art, the museum opened up to international contemporary art at the end of the 1940s, under the aegis of curator Paul Seylaz, with exhibitions of abstract art, particularly French and Italian. The collection is developing in parallel and contemporary art now occupies an important place in the museum's acquisitions. In 1982, Catherine Renaud succeeded Paul Seylaz at the head of the museum. It was replaced in 1984 by Edmond Charrière, then by Lada Umstätter in 2007. Since 2018, the museum has been directed by David Lemaire. The work of Léopold Robert (1794-1835), recognized by critics and sought after by European collectors during the artist's lifetime, gradually fell into oblivion after his suicide in Venice, until its rediscovery in XX th century by the Swiss art historians. It is characterized by its romantic themes of brigands and Italian beauties in costumes, to which the painter owed his fame. Its aesthetic position is also significant of the passage from neoclassicism to romanticism, from David to Delacroix. In it is prolonged the conception of the beautiful ideal, the heroism of the feelings of history painting, but applied to genre scenes. Swiss painting is represented by works from the late XIX th century and early XX th century of Ferdinand Hodler, Albert Anker, Félix Vallotton, Alice Bailly, Edouard Vallet, Gustave Buchet and many others. A set of sculptures by Martin Disler opens the collection to neo-expressionism. In 2018, the museum receives the collection of architect Erwin Oberwiler. A fund of a thousand works, mostly on paper, Swiss artists active between 1960 and 2017 is thus formed, providing significant insight of the Swiss contemporary art in the second half of the XX th century. Located in the 1 st floor, 30 paintings bequeathed to the city of La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1986 from the collection assembled by René and Madeleine Junod patrons between 1930 and 1950. They assured of their support several cultural institutions and in particular the Museum of Fine Arts. Their collection of paintings was dedicated to the illustration of modern French art and marked a predilection for realistic art rooted in the tradition of genres, portraiture, landscape or still life. Their legacy includes a series of thirty paintings by artists of the XVIII th century as Francesco Guardi or Jean-Etienne Liotard, the XIX th century with the Impressionists: Gustave Courbet, Honoré Daumier and Delacroix, but also the Neo-Impressionists: Paul Gauguin, Camille Pissaro, Auguste Renoir or Vincent van Gogh. Among the artists of the XX th century we find works by Georges Braque, André Derain, Albert Marquet, Henri Matisse, Amadeo Modigliani, there are also paintings by Georges Rouault, Chaïm Soutine, Maurice Utrillo and Maurice de Vlaminck. All presented testimony to the artistic reception and dominant trends in the art market in Western Switzerland in the middle of the XX th century and also suggests several levels, as the history of landscape Constable to Soutine, portrait, from Liotard to Modigliani, filiation, from the point of view of color, of Delacroix, Monticelli, Van Gogh, Derain, etc. In september 2017, the museum and the City of La Chaux-de-Fonds decide to return - at the request of the descendants of the collector Anna Jaffé a painting by John Constable looted in 1942 by the French Government's Commissariat for Jewish Affairs. Sold at auction, this painting entitled La Vallée de la Stour had passed through several owners before the Junod couple bought it and bequeathed it to the city. In 2007, the artist Olivier Mosset bequeathed his personal collection to the museum as a donation. Bringing together works by artists from the second half of the XX th century, such as Armleder, Joseph Beuys, Carl Andre, Sol Lewitt, Peter Halley or Yves Klein, it also allows to take stock of the art world member founder of BMPT.