Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, known as the MMFA or Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, stands at 1380 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on the city's Golden Square Mile. It was founded in 1860 as the Art Association of Montreal and is the oldest art museum in Canada. Its first purpose-built home on Sherbrooke Street, a neoclassical marble building, opened in 1912, and it has since grown through additions that make it a campus of several pavilions: the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion for Peace, the Liliane and David M. Stewart Pavilion, the Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion of 1991 and the Claire and Marc Bourgeois Pavilion for Quebec and Canadian Art, a converted church. The collection of tens of thousands of objects spans antiquity to the present, with strengths in European old masters, Canadian art including the Group of Seven and Quebec modernists such as Paul-Émile Borduas and Jean Paul Riopelle, Inuit art, decorative arts and design, and ancient Mediterranean and world cultures. The curatorial approach is mixed, with chronological galleries for European and Canadian art and thematic displays for design and world cultures, plus major touring exhibitions and an unusual role as a destination for art therapy and social programmes. The museum has undertaken expansions and renovations, including a restoration of the old Erskine and American Church into the Bourgeois Pavilion, with its Tiffany windows. Free admission for visitors under 31 applies, and the museum has a reputation for ambitious temporary shows covering fashion, jazz and film. Underground passages connect the pavilions, so a full visit moves between buildings without going outdoors, a useful feature in Montreal's winter.