Why You Should Visit the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Montreal, A City Overflowing With Art

Among the big cities of North-America, Montreal is one of the best destinations for art-lovers. A city that hosts numerous artistic festival and events each year, with murals decorating anything from old buildings to sky-scrapers and public art displayed at every other intersection, Montreal is an open-air art museum. And a city so vibrant with creativity needs an arts museum to measure up to its standards, as the Montreal Museum Of Fine Arts surely does.

So naturally Rick and I had to visit it. And we were in luck. On the first Sunday of each month a number of museums in Montreal offer free entrance. The Montreal Museum Of Fine Arts being one of them, it offers its visitors the opportunity to see all of its permanent collections free of charge, and we couldn’t resist the occasion.

The Montreal Museum Of Fine Arts

After a short walk away from Peel station down on Sherbrooke, you can immediately tell you are approaching the museum when you find yourself surrounded by a variety of publicly displayed modern sculptures that lead the way to the intersection of Avenue du Musée (Museum Avenue) and Sherbrooke. That is where the three buildings encompassing the four pavilions of the museum can be found.

Rick and I spent more than six hours roaming the corridors of the museum and it was barely enough time to skim-through the vast collection or artworks that covers centuries of art history from all the continents. (Do not worry though, we went back several times since in order to enjoy each section thoroughly, and I was really happy to have the time get lost in admiration of majestic works of art). I was impressed to find that the collections feature so many great names, from old masters like Rembrandt and Goya to modern impressionists like Picasso and Monet, as well as an extensive section dedicated to contemporary artists.

The museum does not only expose works of traditional arts like painting and sculpture. For instance, one of the four pavilions, the Liliane and David M. Stewart Pavilion, is entirely dedicated to decorative arts and design. Moreover, large sections of other pavilions feature prints, photography and multimedia projects. One particularity of the museum’s collections is that they exceed their aesthetic and artistic value, through the way they are organized and displayed they also provide an art history lesson or, as is the case of the Quebec and Canadian Art Collection, simply a history lesson.

However, one should note that everything I mentioned so far only encompasses the permanent collections. Depending on when you choose to visit the museum you can enjoy different exhibitions that are temporarily on display.

A Museum For All Artistic Tastes

The highlight of the visit to the museum was definitely the Claire and Marc Bourgie Pavilion which hosts the collection of Quebec and Canadian Art, and where I discovered painters with whose art I fell in love right away like Jean-Paul Riopelle and Paul-Émile Borduas. At that time I had only lived in Canada for one year and I was unfamiliar with the artistic movements specific to the country, so I was pleasantly surprised to find so many fine examples of the abstract expressionist style, which appeals greatly to my aesthetic sense.

From admirers of classic works of the old masters to young souls in love with new artistic movements of the 21st century, the museum offers something for every artistic taste. Whether you are in Montreal for a while or you live here you will not regret investing your time in visiting the Montreal Museum Of Fine Arts.

If you are curious to see more about our visit to the museum, you can watch this video.

Visit the site of the museum here.