Photo © Marc Cramer
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ collections
The Museum’s rich collections are divided into six major sections distributed among the five pavilions of the Museum complex. Each of them focuses on a key area of the holdings. Since its founding in 1860, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is more forward-looking than ever!
The institution, which is not a government-run museum, has relied on generous donors for the expansion of its encyclopedic heritage collection, which includes more then 45,000 works.
The Museum’s collections were thoroughly studied and given a major reinstallation in 2001 as well as in 2011, prior to the opening of the Claire and Marc Bourgie Pavilion of Quebec and Canadian Art, and again in 2016, with the inauguration of the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion for Peace. The new pavilions have enabled visitors to enjoy enhanced views of thousands of works in spectacular exhibition spaces.
The MMFA’s new Stéphan Crétier and Stéphany Maillery Wing for World Cultures and Togetherness will open in November 2019.
Here is a sampling of the works in our collections. Please note that the works shown on this page may not necessarily be currently on view in the galleries. You can explore our publications and art books in the M Boutique and Bookstore.
For more information on all the works in the collection, see the Artefacts Canada database of the Canadian Heritage Information Network.
This site’s Permanent Collection section was expanded thanks to the support of the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec, as part of the implementation of measure 41 of Quebec’s digital culture plan and to the Ville de Montréal under the Entente sur le développement culturel de Montréal.
The project to digitize and disseminate Inuit works on paper is funded by the Government of Canada.
