The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, cité muséale

While the  At the heart of the city visits will tour downtown Montreal this spring, discover in this article one of Montreal’s well known cultural institution, the MBAM.  

The MBAM has created a cité muséale on Sherbrooke Street, consisting of a number of interconnected pavilions, anchored by the original 1912 building designed by Montreal architects Edward and W.S. Maxwell. The Beaux-Arts architecture of that pavilion sends a clear message – this is an important building: a monument to culture. 

TheArt Association of Montreal 

TheArt Association of Montreal, a group ofSquare Mile art collectors founded in 1860, built a public art gallery in Phillips Square in 1879. In 1910, when the building became too small for their activities, they bought a lot on Sherbrooke Street at the northwest corner of what is now Museum Avenue and invited three Montreal architectural firms to compete for the building.

Edward and W.S. Maxwell were awarded the commission and designed a building that, while completely faithful to the Beaux-Arts principles of symmetry and classical elements, was also simple and elegant. The choice of white Vermont marble was a clear statement from the Association that the new gallery was to be a significant building. 

The Maxwells’ imposing design made entering the Museum a deliberate act. The visitor walked up a grand stairway, through a classical colonnade and massive doors. Inside, in the entrance hall, marble – the same Vermont marble on the exterrior was used for the floor – was the dominant material.     

From the entrance hall, museum-goers moved up an imposing stairway to the galleries above. The plan of the exhibition spaces is symmetrical, as dictated by Beaux-Arts principles. The Beaux-Arts language was very much in vogue in this era in North America, used by architects such as Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge for the 1893 Art Institute of Chicago.   

The Art Association included affluent Square Mile businessmen such as Sir William Van Horne, James Ross, Sir George Drummond, Richard B. Angus and Charles Hosmer, all of whom were avid art collectors. In addition to contributing money to the museum, they also donated works of art.     

When it opened in 1912, the museum was one of the institutions that would transform Sherbrooke Street at the turn of the twentieth century. To the east, the Erskine Presbyterian Church was first, completed in 1894; the Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul to the west was later, completed in 1932. The 1912 construction of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel also marked the shift away from single-family homes as the dominant building type on Sherbrooke, further emphasised by the addition of apartment buildings like the Château Apartments in 1926.   

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts - Michal and Renata Hornstein and Liliane and David M. Stewart Pavilions 

The museum building itself has been modified many times primarily to create exhibition space for a growing collection. The Norton Wing, an extension designed by architects Fetherstonhaugh & Durnford, was added in 1939. Viewed from du Musée, this addition blends almost seamlessly with the original.

The Art Association formally changed the institution’s name to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1949 to reflect the wider range of its growing collection of decorative arts beyond paintings and sculpture.   

In 1976, Fred Lebensold, partner in Arcop Associates, designed a modernist concrete pavilion for the Museum immediately to the north of and connected to the 1939 extension. Following renovations to the interior in 2012, the Stewart Pavilion now houses the extraordinary collection of decorative art and design.

Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion 

Driven by a need to create exhibition space in the late 1980s, the Museum planned to expand by building on the south side of Sherbrooke between Crescent and Bishop Streets. The initial design concept proposed by architect Moshe Safdie entailed the demolition of the 1905 New Sherbrooke apartment building on the western half of the block fronting on Sherbrooke Street. In the face of strong opposition to this design proposal, two alternatives were put forward for public consultations – the option retained kept the facades of the apartment building. The project, completed in 1991, comprised three elements: the refitted New Sherbrooke; the entry pavilion; and a pavilion to the south of the alley running between Crescent and Bishop.   

The monumental arch intended as a counterpoint to the character of Sherbrooke Street has never been as successful as the entry to the 1912 building; the choice of the same white Vermont marble as cladding for the Desmarais pavilion has meant that there is an across-the-street conversation between the two buildings.           

A tunnel under Sherbrooke Street linked the Desmarais pavilion to the original building; the new building then became the single entry point to the newly-expanded Museum. In 1999, architects Provencher Roy, neatly inserted a system of elevators and stairs into the southeast corner of the 1912 building, improving accessibility. 

Claire and Marc Bourgie Pavilion of Quebec and Canadian Art  

The Erskine Presbyterian Church was designed by one of Montreal’s most renowned architects, Alexander Cowper Hutchison in 1894. The robust church is built of Montreal limestone with inserts of Miramichi sandstone and is best described as Richardsonian Romanesque, after the Chicago architect H. H. Richardson. Following a merger with the American United Church in 1934, the church interior was remodelled in its entirety by Nobbs & Hyde in 1938 and thereafter known as the Erskine and American Church.   

Classified as a National Historic Site in 1998, the church was purchased by the Museum in 2008 and repurposed as a concert space, part of the Claire and Marc Bourgie Pavilion, completed in 2011. Eighteen remarkable stained glass windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany were restored as part of the project.

Sliced in behind the church (on the site of the former church hall annex), a resolutely contemporary six-storey gallery houses the collection of Quebec and Canadian art. The architects of the Bourgie pavilion, Provencher Roy, chose to clad this gallery in the Vermont marble of both the Desmarais and Hornstein pavilions – but with a twist. The slabs of marble were cut and hung on the structure in the same orientation as they appeared in the quarry.

The link under Sherbrooke Street was extended to connect to the Bourgie Pavilion, creating a passage that is both unexpected and an expansive space for contemporary art.  

Sculpture garden and installations on Avenue du Musée 

Cleverly overcoming a frustration with the corner site that had existed since the construction of the original 1912 pavilion – namely the inability to expand into a landscape in the area around the building – the first sculpture garden on Avenue du Musée was created in 2004 on the narrow band of grassy space adjacent to the sidewalk. Following completion of the Bourgie Pavilion in 2011, the City of Montreal in collaboration with the Museum, designed a sculpture garden that wraps around the former Erskine and American Church.

Since 2012, Avenue du Musée is closed at its intersection with Sherbrooke Street for the summer and landscape architects and designers are invited to create an installation. Playful, colourful and intriguing to passers-by, these installations reinforce the idea of a cité muséale.  

Mabel Burnett Pangman House 3430 av. du Musée.  

Although not a public space, the handsome red brick Square Mile house designed by architects Findlay & McGregor in 1907 is part of the museum neighbourhood. Purchased by the museum in 1947, the house was dedicated to the Museum Art School, then repurposed for administrative office use.  

The Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion for Peace  

The "fifth pavilion" is the result of an architectural competition held in 2013 and won by the consortium formed by Atelier TAG and Jodoin Lamarre Pratte. The 2016 glass and aluminum volume is conceived as a different version of a museum - a link to the community rather than exclusively to art galleries. The two lower levels are spaces for education and art therapy, while the upper levels are devoted to exhibitions. At night, the pavilion lights up the street.    

We invite you to visit our blog again soon for more articles and videos about downtown Montreal! 

Written by Nancy Dunton. Thanks to Bruce McNiven.