For more than a century the McCord Stewart Museum has been a landmark in the heart of Montreal and a witness to the city's history — its life as Quebec's metropolis, its reach across Canada and beyond, and above all the vitality, creativity and diversity of the communities that make it up. The museum exists to amplify those voices, and it has the material to do it: six expansive collections comprising some 3.2 million images, objects, documents and works of art, a holding that ranks it among the leading museums in North America.
What it does with that heritage is the point. Committed to decolonization and to sustainable development, the McCord Stewart builds exhibitions and educational, cultural and community-engagement programmes that examine social history and contemporary questions through a critical and inclusive lens, with the frank intention of moving its audiences to act for a fairer society. Indigenous Voices of Today is a permanent fixture; outdoors, The Mountain at the Heart of Montreal takes the story of Mount Royal into the street, and Beyond the Games – Montreal's Olympic Story extends the museum's reach into a virtual exhibition. Recent temporary shows have run from On the Menu, a history of the Montreal restaurant, through Montreal 1976: An Olympic Feat, to Céline in Dior: A Dazzling Moment.
One of the museum's happiest ideas costs nothing at all. Museum Alley, a pedestrianised stretch of Victoria Street open year-round, gives visitors a taste of the classic Montreal ruelle — a green space in the middle of downtown, and an exhibition in its own right. For those organising events, the museum offers four distinctive rooms, among them a sumptuous grand arched hallway well suited to refined gatherings, meetings and cocktail receptions, and a theatre fitted with current technology.
Critical, generous, and rooted in the streets around it, the McCord Stewart is the museum that tells Montreal to itself — and it has been doing so, thoughtfully and without complacency, for over a hundred years.