Rising Suns

The MMFA’s transformation continues with the fresh redesign of the fourth floor in the Claire and Marc Bourgie Pavilion. As of November 2025, this space will welcome temporary exhibitions dedicated to a reinterpretation of Quebec and Canadian art history with works drawn from the Museum’s collection. There will be a new exhibition every year.

The inaugural exhibition, Rising Suns: Art from the Confederacies of the Great Lakes and Rivers, brings together around twenty works by artists from different confederacies, nations, and generations who, through their practices, attest to the Indigenous art histories of recent centuries.

Combining rarely exhibited works with recent acquisitions, this is the Museum’s first collection presentation dedicated to artists active from the 1970s to today, who belong to the Rotinonhsión:ni, Wendat and W8banakiak confederacies and Anishinaabeg alliances from the Great Lakes and Rivers.

The exhibition highlights a rich diversity of techniques and media—including wampum beadwork, painting, photography, sculpture, video and installation. These practices are rooted in the distinct creative traditions held by Rotinonhsión:ni, Anishinaabeg, W8banakiak, and Wendat artists, whose contributions to Quebec, Canadian and United States art history are still too often overlooked.

The Montreal archipelago, a territory facing the rising sun at the east of the continent, is considered a meeting place for Indigenous ecosystems, relationships, diplomacies, languages and oralities. Rising Suns first traces and honours the nation-to-nation exchanges that took place here within Indigenous confederacies, then those that unfolded over centuries with French, Dutch, and British communities. A later rotation of artworks will shine a light on recent movements of Indigenous resistance, resurgence, and assertion of Indigenous lands, waters and rights.

Through their varied practices, the exhibited artists express understandings of the world and of territory that have been forged over thousands of years of exchange, spirituality, observation and respect for nature.