Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal (Montréal Museum of Fine Arts)

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal (Montréal Museum of Fine Arts) Review

Not surprisingly, Canada's oldest museum has one of the finest collections of Canadian art anywhere. In the fall of 2011 the museum moved the works of such luminaries as Paul Kane, the Group of Seven, Paul-Émile Borduas, and Marc-Aurèle Fortin into a brand new display space, built onto the back of the neoclassical Erskine and American United Church, one of the city's most historic Protestant churches. The nave has been preserved as a meeting place and exhibition hall and also displays the church's 18 Tiffany stained-glass windows, the biggest collection of Tiffany's work outside the United States. The rest of the Musée's permanent collection, which includes works by everyone from Rembrandt to Renoir, is housed in its two other pavilions: the neoclassical Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion just across rue de la Musée from the church, and the glittering, glass-fronted Jean-Noël-Desmarais Pavilion just across rue Sherbrooke. All three are linked by tunnels. The museum also includes the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, where you can see some fanciful bentwood furniture designed by Frank Gehry, a marvelous collection of 18th-century English porcelain, and 3,000—count 'em—Japanese snuff boxes collected by, of all people Georges Clemenceau, France's prime minister during World War I. The museum also has a gift shop, a bookstore, a restaurant, a cafeteria, and a gallery where you can buy or even rent paintings by local artists.