Montréal

Libraries and Museums

In addition to the Biblioteque Nationale and its university libraries, Montréal is home to numerous museums. The Montréal Museum of Fine Arts contains classical and modern collections and hosts numerous traveling exhibitions. Located on Sherbrooke Street, the museum is housed in a neoclassical building, and a modern annex faces it on the opposite side of the street.

The McCord Museum concentrates on the history of Montréal, the Province of Québec, and Canada from the eighteenth century to the present. Its collections include paintings, drawings and photographs, costumes and textiles, and ethnographic objects from native peoples.

The Cinémathèque Québécoise tracks trends in Québec, Canadian, and international film, television, and visual media. Photos, books, posters, scripts, clippings, and other documents are housed at an ultramodern location on Boul. De Maisonneuve East. Although films and tapes are stored in special vaults in Boucherville, the Cinémathèque in Montréal regularly screens films, old and new, and is a major centre for exhibitions and meetings.

The Montréal Museum of Decorative Arts on Rue Crescent contains major collections on twentieth-century decorative trends, including furniture, glass, ceramics, jewelry, textiles, and graphic and industrial design.

The Canadian Centre for Architecture is a museum, library, and research center devoted to architecture, landscape, and urban design, past and present. Exhibits and collections focus on the relationship between architectural trends and their relationship to natural and social environments. Collections are drawn from societies, past and present, in all parts of the world. Reflecting its interest in the interplay between past and present, the Centre is housed in a modern building located in a garden built to restore the surrounding urban area. The center includes Shaughnessy House, one of the few nineteenth-century Montréal homes still open to the public.

McGill University's Redpath Museum focuses on the history and diversity of the natural world. One of the cities oldest museums, the Redpath functions both as a university teaching facility and a natural history museum for elementary and high school students. However, budgetary cutbacks have forced the museum to restrict the hours in which it is open to the public.

Other museums include the Stewart Museum, an original fort with exhibitions documenting the settlement of the new world, located in the Parc des Îles.