Policy on the Protection of Personal Information

We collect and use your personal information for the following purposes:

• To identify you and authenticate your identity in our computer systems in order to facilitate transactions.
• To enable us to provide services tailored to your needs and interests, including customizing your user experience.
• To periodically communicate with you in writing (for example, by sending you newsletters), by phone or electronically to keep you informed of our activities.
• To foster our relationship with you as our customer, and engage in business or philanthropic prospecting for the Museum, the Foundation or Bourgie Hall.
• To allow us to gather statistics on their customers (e.g., by asking you to take surveys), establish visitor profiles and ascertain satisfaction levels.
• To allow us to process your donations and prepare tax receipts in accordance with the applicable laws.
• To allow the Foundation to conduct any necessary follow-up in the case of one-time donations;
• To allow us to inform donors of how their donations are being used.
• To enable us to recognize donors’ contributions through various communication channels, such as the annual report, the M magazine, and donor recognition walls.
• To allow the Museum to conduct the necessary follow-up when you renew your membership.

In certain circumstances and under certain conditions, you may withdraw your consent to the use of your personal information for any of the purposes described above by contacting our Privacy Officer (see contact information in Section 9).

We limit the collection of your personal information to what is necessary to fulfill the purposes listed above. Here are some examples of the information we collect:

• Contact information such as first and last name, telephone number, postal address and personal email address
• Date of birth and gender
• Information appearing on a credit card, money order or cheque
• Date of registration as a Museum member and membership renewal date (on file at the Museum)
• Record of donations to the Foundation (on file at the Foundation)
• Data on use of the application or the sites, including the length of time you spend on our sites, traffic on our sites and the pages you click on
• Information on the types of devices used to connect to our sites or our application
• Demographic information relating to your interactions with us, such as your preferred language, areas of interest and preferences
• Inferences made and aggregate personal information generated from the personal information provided by the Museum’s partners

We collect personal information when you use our services or volunteer your information in the following situations:

• Participating in an event or activity
• Using our services in person or online 
• Responding to our surveys
• Sending a question or comment via our various means of communication
• Signing up to receive our electronic communications such as our newsletter
• Purchasing our products
• Becoming a Member or renewing your membership;
• Making a donation
• Interacting with Museum ads on social networks using cookies
• Interacting with the sites of the Museum’s partners

4.1. Cookies

With your prior consent, we and our service providers may use technologies such as web cookies and other tracking tools (including tracking technologies designed for mobile applications) that have functions allowing you to be identified, located or profiled in order to collect your personal information and track information about how you use our sites.

We may combine this information with other personal information collected from you. By choosing not to enable cookies, you ensure that we do not use them on your devices. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your device from certain web pages. They are harmless in the sense that they cannot extract information from your device, over which you have complete control. We and our service providers use cookies to track traffic to our sites and information about your devices and Internet connection – including your IP address, operating system and browser type – and to gather useful information about your areas of interest so we can personalize your future visits. We may store this information or combine it with personal information collected in other ways or received from third parties. This helps us to improve our sites and offer you personalized services, in particular through the following actions:

• By estimating the size of our audience and usage patterns
• By storing information about your preferences that enables us to tailor our sites to your areas of interest
• By speeding up your searches
• By recognizing you when you return to our sites

We collect personal information on our sites using the following types of cookies:

Strictly necessary cookies: These cookies are necessary for our sites to function properly. They perform basic functions that may include connecting to the sites and preventing security threats. We cannot disable these cookies without affecting the functioning of our sites.

Non-essential cookies: These cookies provide non-essential functionalities on our sites. We specify these cookies in our cookie banner and ask for your consent before using them:

• Targeting and advertising cookies: These cookies help us assess the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns and personalize the ads that you see on our sites.
• Analytical cookies: These cookies store information such as the number of visitors to our sites or the web pages visited. They help us evaluate the performance of our sites by determining, for example, whether users are able to easily find what they are looking for. We use Google Analytics in particular for this purpose. To find out more or to disable Google Analytics, please click here.

4.2. Disabling or enabling cookies in your browser

As explained above, you can decide not to allow cookies that collect personal information through profiling, identification and positioning. To do so, you must refuse to enable cookies by clicking on the consent banner on our sites or by changing the configuration of your browser. However, if you decide to block cookies, you may not be able to take advantage of all the features offered on our sites.

There are several ways to manage cookies. Through your browser settings, you can allow or block cookies or configure your browser to warn you before allowing cookies from websites you visit. If you use different computers, depending on where you use them, you will need to ensure that each browser is configured in accordance with your preferences. You can delete or disable any cookies that have been installed in your browser’s cookie file. Each browser has different procedures for managing these settings and preferences.

Click on one of the links below for more information:

• Internet Explorer
• Chrome
• Firefox
• Safari

If you do not use any of the browsers listed above, you will need to select cookies in the “Help” function for information on the location of your cookie file. Note that blocking cookies does not affect other types of analytical tools we may use to collect generic information about how you use our sites.

4.3. Analytical tools other than cookies

Please note that we use analytical tools, including a customer relationship management application, to track the number of emails opened and hyperlinks clicked. This information helps us to better tailor our advertising to you. For more information on this subject, please contact our Privacy Officer in accordance with Section 8 of this Policy.

We do not sell or disclose your personal information to third parties without your consent, except as set out below or as required or permitted by law. We conduct rigorous assessments to identify and mitigate any risks to the protection of your personal information before disclosing or sharing it.

We may disclose your personal information to certain third parties in the following cases:

• To members of staff, representatives or agents of the Museum and the Foundation.
• To service providers and partners. Your personal information may be processed by certain third parties that provide us with services to help us manage our sites, offer our services, better understand the users of our sites or provide services to users – including purchasing tickets, processing credit card payments or providing customer service. These service providers (polling firms for statistical purposes, customer relationship management applications, marketing agencies for data analysis purposes, social media and networks for advertising or business development purposes, etc.) receive only the information they need to provide these services and are bound by robust confidentiality agreements. They are not authorized to use personal information for any purposes other than those stipulated in the context of providing the services for which they are contracted.
• For targeted advertising. We use the platforms provided by Meta and Facebook to promote advertisements based on users’ interests and to analyze how users interact with these ads. To do this, we may use tracking tools or convert the email address, phone number or other contact information you provide into a unique identifier that these platforms can compare to a unique identifier created from the information provided. Please visit the Meta website for information on Facebook’s privacy policies regarding advertising or to disable this option: www.facebook.com/about/privacy/.
• To tenants, co-producers or partners of Bourgie Hall. In the context of concerts held at Bourgie Hall, we may rent the hall to third parties (ensembles, partner cultural organizations, co-producers or tenants). We may manage the ticket sales for their shows at Bourgie Hall and, in return, these third parties may ask us for the list of attendees in order to communicate content that may be of interest to them (e.g., promotional offers, changes to upcoming concerts, new programming or other information for business development purposes). These third parties are also bound by robust confidentiality agreements when sharing any personal information.

5.1. Communication of personal information outside Quebec

Personal information may be transferred to service providers outside Quebec. The Museum conducts rigorous assessments to identify and mitigate any risks to the protection of your personal information before transferring it outside the province.

We have technological and organizational policies and practices in place to protect personal information (passwords, access recovery procedures, etc.). The purpose of these measures is to prevent the theft and loss of personal information, as well as its unauthorized use, modification, disclosure and access. Access to personal information is restricted to members of our staff and authorized third parties who need it in order to perform their duties.

The Museum retains personal information only as long as is necessary for the purposes described above or to comply with its legal obligations.

Subject to applicable laws, you may be granted certain rights with respect to your personal information, namely:

• The right to access and obtain a copy of your personal information 
• The right to request that your personal information be disclosed to a third party (effective September 2024) 
• The right to correct inaccurate personal information
• The right to withdraw consent to the use of personal information in certain circumstances
• The right to request the deletion of personal information that is obsolete or no longer required for the purposes for which it was collected

You may exercise these rights with regard to personal information in our custody or control by contacting our Privacy Officer using the contact information below.

We may request personal information in order to verify the identity of the person seeking to exercise their rights.

Our Privacy Officer is in charge of overseeing the application of our principles regarding the protection of personal information.

Should you have any questions or comments regarding this Policy, the manner in which your personal information is used by the Museum, the Foundation, Bourgie Hall or our service providers, or regarding the exercise of your rights with regard to your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer:

Email address:
confidentialite@mbamtl.org

Mailing address:
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
c/o Privacy Officer
Administration Department
2189 Bishop Street
Montreal, Quebec H3G 2E8

Telephone number:
514-285-1600

We may update this Policy from time to time to reflect changes to its principles regarding the protection of personal information. We encourage you to visit this page from time to time to ensure that you are aware of any such changes. The date of the most recent update is indicated below.