artch festival 2025

The artch Festival kicked off today!

Workshops, meetings, and performances
focused on artistic collaboration

October 15 – 19, 2025
12 p.m to 7 p.m.

Lobby, 1 PVM
1, Place Ville Marie, Montréal, QC

The artch festival kicks off today in the lobby of 1 PVM at Place Ville Marie, inviting the public to discover its 8th edition, centered on cooperation and creating together. Until October 19, from 12 PM to 7 PM, visitors can explore 150 works by 18 emerging artists, take part in workshops and critical discussions, and engage in creative activities focused on new forms of artistic collaboration.

artch stands out for its emphasis on artistic collaboration and collective innovation, questioning the ways in which artists organize themselves and interact with other stakeholders beyond the traditional art circle. In a context where the sustainability of artistic practices is more important than ever, this festival offers a fresh perspective on the role of artists in society.

Sarah Kitzy Gineau-Delyon, Executive and Artistic Director of artch stated:

"This program particularly reflects our mission: to support emerging artists in their professional development while creating spaces for dialogue and collective reflection. Each workshop and each meeting has been designed to offer concrete tools to artists, but also to question our ways of working and collaborating."

Highlights of the week

• October 15–19 → Continuous performances by Madison Strizic

• October 15, 4 PM → Workshop Organizing an Artist Collective: Building, Structuring, and Funding Your Project

• October 16, 1:30–4:30 PM → Performance by Amara Barner

• October 17, 4:30 PM → Bilingual Panel Archiving Self-Managed Art Centers: Remembering Centers Across Canada

• October 18 → Creative workshops focused on recycling and material reuse

• October 19, 1 PM → Participatory Workshop Tie Alteration with Fannie 

Additional opportunities for discovery

True to its mission of democratizing contemporary art, artch maintains free access to its entire program. As places are limited for workshops, registration is required.

Since 2018, artch has supported more than 167 artists in their artistic careers, who now enjoy regional, national, and international recognition.

Check out the complete program here.

Musée des Hospitalières 2025: Medicine and Charity

Medicine and Charity:

Hôtels-Dieu from the Middle Ages to New France

From October 15, 2025

What did hospitals in New France inherit from French medieval hospitals?

Montreal's museum Musée des Hospitalières is presenting a new exhibition where the visitors of all ages will find the answer to this question and many others in a brand-new exhibition that covers two continents, the largest temporary exhibition ever mounted by the Musée des Hospitalières de l’Hôtel-Dieu. This exceptional and truly vibrant exhibition, Medicine and Charity: Hôtels-Dieu from the Middle Ages to New France, produced in collaboration with France, should be of interest to many visitors.

Featuring stained-glass pieces, sculptures, paintings, furnishings, tapestries, common objects related to patient care, and archival materials, the exhibition opens a fascinating window to the extraordinarily rich hospital heritage of France and Québec.

The Musée benefited from a fruitful partnership with four Hôtels-Dieu in France, founded between the 13th and 17th centuries in Tonnerre, Beaune, Chalon-sur-Saône, and Baugé. Several religious communities in Québec also lent artefacts: the Augustines of Québec City, the Sulpiciens of Montréal, the Grey Nuns, and, of course, the Hospitalières de Saint-Joseph. In addition, there was the valuable support offered by the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, the Université de Montréal, and McGill University.

Items never seen before in Canada

Visitors will have an opportunity to see almost a hundred remarkable works and archival materials from France classified as cultural assets and never before displayed in Canada, as well as more than fifty artefacts from Québec.

The exposition is a celebration of the history and heritage of hospitals in France and Québec, stretching back hundreds of years. The Hôtels-Dieu established in New France in the 17th century followed the long hospital tradition that began in the West in the Middle Ages, when charitable institutions – places of worship and welcome – were founded on Christian charity. Their purpose was to care for the poor and all those in a situation of vulnerability: the most disadvantaged, the infirm, the sick, pilgrims, and the elderly.

Pioneering women in the spotlight

The hospital environment was one of the few areas in which women, lay or religious, had the opportunity to put their management and/or caregiving skills to good use. The exhibition highlights women who played an essential role as founders or patrons, from Margaret of Burgundy to Jeanne Mance, who were respectively the founders of Hôtel-Dieu de Tonnerre in 1293 and Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal in1642, as well as Guigone de Salins, who, in the 15th century, took the torch from her late husband, Nicolas Rolin, at Hôtel-Dieu de Beaune.

This vibrant, vivid exhibition highlight an important part of the history of France and Québec – don’t miss it!

 

Acknowledgments

This project has received support from the Société des Attractions Touristiques du Québec through the Tourism Growth Program of Canada Economic Development for Québec Regions. The Musée receives operating funding from the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec and from The Ville de Montréal. The Musée des Hospitalières extends its warmest thanks to its lenders, sponsors, and partners

All photos @Nadia Slejskova

For more information visit the museum's website.

Portrait of Jeanne Mance, Oil on wood.

McCord 2025: Africa Fashion

AFRICA FASHION

The landmark exhibition celebrating the irresistible creativity of the contemporary African fashion scene.

September 25, 2025 - February 1, 2026

This new McCord Stewart Museum's exhibition,  organized by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, is one of the largest ever dedicated to the African fashion scene. It showcases the creative energy of designers, makers and photographers from across the continent. Montreal is the only Canadian stop on an international tour that includes London, Brooklyn, Portland, Melbourne, and Chicago.

The exhibition features some one hundred garments and accessories, as well as textiles, photographs and videos, from the early 1960s till today, illustrating how African fashions have drawn international attention and become a powerful force for post-colonial self-expression.

The exhibition is organized into eight sections laid out chronologically from 1960 to today. 80 garment ensembles displayed on mannequins bring into light talented, cutting-edge designers from across the African continent. 

Africa’s cultural renaissance

The exhibition opens with 1960, the year that seventeen African countries became liberated of colonial rule. Tes newfound freedom generated a new sense of pride in being African that played out in literature, music, the arts and fashion. The first sections of the exhibition illustrate how various traditional cloths and textile practices from around the continent took on new political meaning in the context of independence. Thanks to the talent and influence of pioneers like Naïma Bennis, Shade Thomas-Fahm, Chris Seydou, Kofi Ansah and Alphadi who helped promote the booming industry, African fashions now have clients worldwide.

A vibrant continent alight with creativity

Focusing on the modern era, the second half of the exhibition demonstrates that the growth from the 1960s to the 2000s shows no signs of slowing in the new millennium. With the same desire for self-expression, designers and brands like Imane Ayissi, IAMISIGO, Moshions, Thebe Magugu and Sindiso Khumalo are charting their own course, pushing boundaries and opening up conversations around culture, race, gender and sexuality. The central exhibition space highlights a vibrant scene where African creations are leading the way in contemporary cutting-edge fashion. This section reveals that the period from the 2000s to today is marked by designers who challenge assumptions about who and what African people and African fashions are and can be.

In the second half of the twentieth century, African photographers took advantage of the democratization of photography to create portraits illustrating the euphoria of independence in nations on the brink of self-rule. Africa Fashion showcases their ability to capture those for whom dressing to be seen is a way of life. The images presented in the exhibition bear witness to a constant reinvention of identities, all within an ever-evolving African fashion scene of growing international importance.

Bal Afrikana: A Celebration of Black Creativity and Heritage

At the end of the exhibition, a short recap video showcases the two most recent editions of Bal Afrikana, organized by the Centre culturel afro-canadien de Montreal (CCAM), an associate partner of the exhibition. This 90-second film highlights Montreal’s creative industry talent, featuring work by local Afro-descendent designers.

Dr. Christine Checinska, Senior Curator of African and African Diaspora Textiles and Fashion, Victoria & Albert Museum stated:

"Our guiding principle for Africa Fashion is the foregrounding of individual African voices and perspectives. The exhibition presents African fashions as a self-defining art form that reveals the richness and diversity of African histories and cultures. To showcase all fashions across such a vast region would be to attempt the impossible. Instead, Africa Fashion celebrates the vitality and innovation of a selection of fashion creatives, exploring the work of the vanguard in the twentieth century and the creatives at the heart of this eclectic and cosmopolitan scene today. We hope this exhibition will spark a renegotiation of the geography of fashion and become a game-changer for the field."

Anne Eschapasse, the McCord Stewart Museum’s President and CEO, noted:

"We are thrilled to be collaborating for a fifth time with the prestigious Victoria and Albert Museum. Both groundbreaking and timely, this is the first international exhibition to celebrate the emergence, influence, ingenuity and unique energy of African fashion creatives. With its outstanding collection and commitment to intercultural dialogue, the McCord Stewart Museum is a leading destination for fashion in Canada, with exhibitions like ELEGANZA: Italian Fashion From 1945 to Today (2016), Balenciaga Master of Couture (2018), Christian Dior (2021) and Parachute: Subversive Fashion of the ‘80s (2021-2022), and jumped at the chance to host the exhibition’s sole Canadian showing. The exhibition will also be an occasion to spotlight the talents of Afro-descendant creatives from our own community, through a partnership with the Montreal Afro-Canadian Cultural Centre (CCAM)."

Production Team

Curatorship: Dr. Christine Checinska, Senior Curator of African and African Diaspora Textiles and Fashion, Victoria & Albert Museum
McCord Stewart Museum Curator: Alexis Walker, Associate Curator, Dress, Fashion and Textiles
Project Management: Eve Martineau, Coordinator, Exhibitions, McCord Stewart Museum
Exhibition Design: Guillaume Kukucka
Graphic Design: Stéfanie Vermeersc 

All photos @ Nadia Slejskova

The dedicated internets address of this article or click on the title above the first photo at the top. 

For more information about current exhibitions and special evens associated with this exhibition, visit the McCord Stewart Museum website.

 

MMFA 2025: Kent Monkman

KENT MONKMAN:

History Is Painted by the Victors

September 27, 2025 – March 8, 2026

The Montreal Museum of Fines Arts (MMFA) presents the Canadian premiere of the exhibition by Kent Monkman that brings together some 40 of his monumental paintings. The exhibition includes works on loan from Canadian and American museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, some private collectors, and also a selection from the MMFA's permanent collection.

Mokman is a figurative painter par excellence, who draws and creates human bodies on his canvases with the precision of the classical painters of past eras. He is also a superb calorist, who generously uses the rainbow gamut of bright colours to dazzles his audience. His huge canvases are not only striking but also quite overpowering, bringing the viewer inside the dramatic universe of his imagination.

The story narratives that Monkman creates on canvases are quite uniquely portrayed. They are interlaced with historical elements, mythology, and his personal interpretation of the historical past. His detailed compositions are strongly dramatic, complex and monumental. Yet, they are extremely elegant, and the language of his colours is striking. A number of his compositions seem to be inspired by the great painters of the past.

Credits and curatorial team

The exhibition was organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Denver Art Museum. It was curated by Léuli Eshrāghi, Curator of Indigenous Practices at the MMFA, and John Lukavic, the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Native Arts, Denver Art Museum.

For those curious about Monkman’s artistic creative process, do not miss to watch the short documentary filmed in his studio. The screen is located on the wall to the right when one comes up the staircase and before entering the exhibition halls. His studio is very much like those of the medieval painters who had a number of assistants performing various task ranging from helping with some painting details and taking care of organizational and studio needs.

All photos @Nadia Slejskova

Visit the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts website for more information and to purchase your tickets online.

This article's dedicated internet website address here.

MMFA 2025: Kent Monkman

Also check my previous article about Kent Monkman in this blog.

MMFA 2025: Decorative Arts and Design

From the Functional to the Fabulous

600 Years of Decorative Arts and Design

New presentation of the decorative arts and design collection

Opens on September 13, 2025.

Today, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) has unveiled the newly reconfigured spaces of its Lilian and David M. Steward Pavilion of Decorative Arts and Design that holds a unique and prestigious collection. The present exhibition, that will have some items on display to rotate in the future, offers to visitors some 800 works (silverware, ceramics, jewelry, furniture, textiles, glassware, crafts and industrial design objects) from Quebec, Canada, and also from abroad.

At the center of this major design installation, the public will once again be able to see Dale Chihuly's The Sun, 2003 (see the very first photo at the top of this article). Previously installed on the front steps of the Museum during the summer, this majestic sculpture composed of 1,200 rays of blown glass will now shine in perpetuity at the heart of the Liliane and David M. Stewart Pavilion.

Please note that to mark the grand reopening of the Liliane and David M. Stewart Pavilion, admission to the Museum will be free for everyone on Saturday, September 13, from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Creative activities and festivities are also planned for Du Musée Avenue. It is a free event, but the registration is required here to enter the Museum. 

Do not miss the opportunity to admire over 600 years of design, discovering the role objects play in shaping our lives, learning to appreciate the design in all its forms while reflecting on our everyday interactions with designed objects.

The renovated interior, spread over the two levels of the Liliane and David M. Stewart Pavilion, is a marvel of Brutalist architecture. The new exhibition floor and the design and art installation displayed within it, covers nearly 2,000 m², bringing together some 800 works (silverware, ceramics, jewellery, furniture, textiles, glassware, craft and industrial design objects) and introduces to the public over 400 designers, artists, and artisans from around the world who contributed their creations to this exhibition. Close to a quarter of these objects are being shown for the first time.

The new re-installation also features a new space dedicated to silver and metal works produced in Europe and Canada from the 17th to 20th century. This gallery presents a selection of silver pieces from the over 1,000 objects that the Honourable Serge Joyal has offered to the MMFA since 1990. Highlights of the collection attest to the importance of silversmithing activity in Quebec City and Montreal from the late 18th century onwards, represented here by master silversmiths Laurent Amiot and Robert Hendery. The collection also traces its expansion in the 1880s under the leadership of the Birks jewellery firm and includes more contemporary works from the 20th century by jewellers Maurice Brault and Walter Schluep.

A new theme-based presentation

Adopting both a trans-historical and theme-based approach, the new presentation explores the evolution of design from the 15th century to the present day, reflecting the social changes that have occurred over that time. The main floor focuses on design as a form of cultural expression while the upper level explores the functionality of design. Visitors can explore the expressive qualities of objects as well as their technical functions and innovations.
 
Twelve themed sections highlight the diversity not only of the objects in the collection but also of their production techniques, ranging from traditional handcrafting to digital fabrication. The reinstallation spotlights innovations in such diverse fields as well-being, communications, domestic life, office work and transportation. Visitors won't want to miss a rare example of Richard Buckminster Fuller's prefabricated Dymaxion (1936) bathroom, a Keracolor B1 (1969) large-format spherical television designed by Arthur Bracegirdle, Douglas Ball's self-contained office capsule dubbed the Clipper CS-1 (1992), or the 10th-anniversary edition of the smart fortwo car (2009), of which only 100 examples were produced.

 

Anchoring the presentation between the upper and lower levels is an object-based chronology that tells the story of the evolution of design from a historical perspective, focusing on themes such as global trade and exchange, colonialism and imperialism, the Industrial Revolution, modernism and 21st-century design.

Mary-Dailey Desmarais, the Chief Curator at the MMFA, stated:

"We're thrilled to share this all-new presentation of our decorative arts and design collection with our visitors. The culmination of an over-three-year collaboration between design historian Rachel Gotlieb and the MMFA's teams, this display studded with objects shown for the first time highlights era-defining aesthetic, material, and technological advances from the 15th century to today. It is both an ode to the ingenuity of artisans and designers past and present and an invitation to discover the many ways decorative arts and design shape our interactions with the world around us."

Rachel Gotlieb, the guest curator, elaborated:
 

"This reinstallation aims to foster greater appreciation for design by encouraging reflection on our everyday interactions with designed objects. It reveals how these works—from crafts to industrial design—evolve along with society and help shape our daily lives with ever greater inventiveness and creativity. It also sheds light on the Museum's collection-building process, highlighting curatorial decisions and cultural considerations that have influenced this comprehensive and remarkable assemblage of decorative arts and design work over time." 

NEW ACQUISITIONS AND RARELY DISPLAYED OBJECTS

The redesigned galleries will bring together many outstanding objects from the MMFA’s collection, including works by Edward Barnard & Sons, Christopher Dresser, Elkington, Nicholas Hilliard, Jean Pierre‑Latz, Mason & Co., Louis Majorelle and Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Remarkable acquisitions include a miniature Louis XV commode, as well as a rare Sèvres breakfast service which depicts miniatures of celebrated literary and artistic women from the 17th and 18th centuries painted by Jean Georget.

Art Deco, Modernism, Pop and Postmodern design are also represented by numerous designers from both here and abroad, including Douglas Ball, Mario Bellini, Jeannette Meunier Biéler, Marcel Breuer, Clarice Cliff, François Dallegret, Riccardo Dalisi, Charles and Ray Eames, Gio Ponti and Piero Fornasetti, Frank O. Gehry, Grete Jalk, Léon Kann, Shiro Kuramata, Carlo Mollino, Isamu Noguchi, Gaetano Pesce, Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, Hugh Spencer, Ettore Sottsass, Walter Dorwin Teague, Vivianna Torun Bülow‑Hübe, and Mariette Rousseau‑Vermette. Contemporary craft and design will also be in the spotlight, with work by Lani Adeoye, Syd Carpenter, Michel Dallaire, James Dyson, Ying Gao, Steven Heinemann, Hitomi Hosono, Hella Jongerius, Ross Lovegrove, Zoë Mowat, Pascale Girardin, Faye Toogood, Ionna Vautrin and Studio 5.5 designers, among others.

Furthermore, the presentation also feature recent acquisitions of works by Indigenous designers, including Michael Massie, Audie Murray and Caroline Monnet in collaboration with Humble Nature.

And, finally, to encourage dialogue between the different art forms represented in the Museum’s collections, the presentation will display paintings, sculptures, and textile and paper works by artists such as Edmund Alleyn, Paul‑Émile Borduas, Shary Boyle, Greg Curnoe, Nadia Myre, Woody De Othello, Pablo Picasso and Nam Jun Paik.

All photos @Nadia Slejskova

Click on images to enlarge them.

Visit the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts website to check on the opening hours and to purchase your tickets online.