The Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland houses permanent and temporary exhibits relating to sport and the Olympic movement. With more than 10,000 pieces, the museum is the largest archive of Olympic Games in the world and one of Lausanne's prime tourist site draws attracting more than 250,000 visitors each year.
The Olympic Museum is surrounded by a park containing numerous works of art on a sporting theme. Among the most notable works of art in the museum's permanent collection are the French sculptors Auguste Rodin's The American Athlete and Niki de Saint Phalle's Les Footballeurs, the Luxembourgish sculptor Lucien Wercollier's tribute to the pole vault Altius, the Colombian sculptor Fernando Botero's Jeune Fille a la Balle and a kinetic art sculpture by the Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely which combines a hockey stick, a boar's head and a motorbike wheel.
The museum was founded on 23 June 1993, on the initiative of Juan Antonio Samaranch. Mexican architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, an International Olympic Committee member, and Jean-Pierre Cahen, were in charge of the project. The museum was named the European Museum of the Year in 1995.
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