Musee des Beaux Arts/Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
1379 Sherbrooke St W
Montreal, QC H3G1J5 Canada
(514) 285-1600
(800) 899-6873
www.mbam.qc.ca

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal) is the grande dame of the Canadian museum world. Founded in 1860, the original pavilion, shown at right – now known as the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion – dates from 1912, and the Jean-Noêl Desmarais pavilion, facing it across Sherbrooke St., a Moshe Safdie design, from 1991. The pavilions are connected by an underground passage.

The museum has a large collection of decorative and ethnographic objects, 19th-century paintings, and Canadian paintings, prints and drawings, only a small fraction of which can be displayed at a time. It also hosts major traveling shows.

Musée D’art Contemporain
185 Ste-Catherine Street West
Montréal, QC H2X 3X5 Canada
(514) 847-6226
www.macm.org

Montreal’s modern art museum, the Musée d’art contemporain, once housed in Cité du Havre, acquired its permanent home by Place des Arts at Jeanne-Mance and Ste-Catherine in 1992. Specializing in works dating from 1940 onwards, the museum hosts shows in all media used by contemporary artists.

Canadian Centre for Architecture
1920 Baile St
Montreal, QC H3H2S6 Canada
(514) 939-7026
www.cca.qc.ca

The Centre Canadian de l’architecture opened in 1989. An interestingly schizoid building, the façade facing René-Lévesque is the Shaughnessy mansion, which came very close to demolition before the museum plan saved it; the façade with the entrance – the gate shown on left – facing Baile Street (one of downtown’s most modest thoroughfares) is as aloof as modern architecture can be. Inside, the mated buildings are superbly well finished.

It’s worth exploring the exterior of the building as part of your visit: the Shaughnessy façade is partially mirrored across René-Lévesque by a spooky sculpture (far right) which leads to an entirely surreal sculpture garden with a view over the Ville-Marie Expressway of the lower parts of town.