The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Is A Huge Art Museum

It was a rainy Saturday morning in Montreal, and fresh from my wild night at Stade Saputo for the Canada/Ireland match, I needed to find some activities to do this weekend. The torrential rain limited my options to only indoor activities, and I decided to go to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, which is the oldest, largest, and most visited art museum in Canada. This was not my first time going to a fine arts museum, and it was not even my first time going to a fine arts museum in Quebec, as I went to the Quebec Museum of Fine Arts in Quebec City last year. I got there as soon as it opened, paid my $30 admission fee, and set off to peruse its exhibitions.

The feature exhibition is a collection of Roman sculptures from Prince Alessandro Torlonia from the House of Torlonia, who are a wealthy aristocratic family from Italy. There are sculptures of different Roman emperors and other figures made from marble and with incredible craftsmanship. There were sculptures of coffins that piqued my interest, as I am sure it must be difficult to move around. Even the lid for the coffin must be very heavy.

I ventured into the main parts of the exhibition where there are different artifacts from ancient African, Chinese, Indian, and Egyptian cultures. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is looking just as much as a history museum as it is an art museum. 

Another exhibition I went to check out is the collection of self-portraits from photographer Richard Avedon which he took between the early 1950s to the mid 2000s. I found this exhibit to be one of the most unsettling exhibits I have seen, as looking at these black-and-white portraits of these people; from celebrities to ordinary people; felt like you were looking into their soul and even into their pain. 

I went to check out one of the main exhibits next, which is a history of the creation of chairs and other furniture over the years. There is a wall of all these different cantilever chair designs, which I thought was neat.

There is a section with 20th century artifacts, from vehicles such as the Brabus Smart Car, to various classic electronics such as vacuum cleaners and telephones.

There is this display of what a cubicle would look like in the 1980s, including an old Macintosh computer. I could not imagine using an old Macintosh computer from the 1980s at all.

There is a section of the museum with Inuit art and sculptures worth checking out.

Finally, there is a section of the museum with traditional paintings, sculptures, and other works of art.

Fatigue set in for me by the end of my visit, as there was so much to see at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and I felt like I was only scratching the surface of what to check out. You could easily spend the whole day seeing everything there was to see in this museum. This was time well spent on a rainy day in Montreal.

More pictures below: