The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts — the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, MMFA for short — is the city's largest art museum and one of the most visited in the country, a cultural landmark in the fullest sense of the phrase. Founded in 1860, it has been built up over more than a century and a half on the generosity of successive generations of Montrealers, and its mission has stayed steady throughout: to acquire, conserve, study, interpret and present significant works from every era and every corner of the world, in the belief that art has a genuinely transformative power and that it belongs to everyone who walks through the door.
The collection now numbers close to 47,000 works — paintings, sculpture, graphic art, photography, multimedia installations and decorative objects, running from antiquity to the present day — and it is displayed across a group of pavilions each with its own character. Quebec and Canadian art fills the Claire and Marc Bourgie Pavilion; Inuit art is presented in ᐆᒻᒪᖁᑎᒃ uummaqutik: essence of life on the first level of the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion; early to modern international art occupies the Hornstein Pavilion for Peace; the Arts of One World unfold in the Stephan Crétier and Stéphany Maillery Wing and on the fourth level of the Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion; the Liliane and David M. Stewart collection covers decorative arts and design; and contemporary art sits below ground in the Desmarais Pavilion. Beyond the galleries, a sculpture garden spills out along Du Musée Avenue, Sherbrooke Street West and Bishop Street, so that part of the museum is simply there in the street for anyone passing. Ancient artefacts share the building with masterpieces by Rodin, Monet and Rembrandt, and the whole is presented from a deliberately progressive, questioning angle: the exhibitions and the cultural programming are designed to prompt new ways of looking, not only at art but at the history of art.
That openness extends well past the walls. The MMFA thinks of itself as a hub of art, community and exchange, and it was a pioneer in the field of art therapy, working with partners across community organisation, education, health and technology so that every audience — not only the initiated — can have a rich encounter with what is on display. World-class exhibitions sit alongside dynamic cultural events and activities pitched at every age, and each project pushes in the same direction, towards something more inclusive, more accessible and more just.
Whether you arrive as a lifelong devotee or simply curious to see what is there, the museum rewards the visit — a place where centuries of global creativity, Indigenous, Québécois and Canadian art, and a genuine sense of civic generosity all meet in the heart of Montreal.