Liliane and David M. Stewart Pavilion
A pavilion devoted to the decorative arts and design: A major asset for Montreal as a UNESCO City of Design!
Photo MMFA, Denis Farley.
Please note that this pavilion is temporarily closed for renovations and improvements to the gallery spaces.
Two levels to explore
Level 1
Museum Collection: Modern Design
(1930-1970)
Museum Collection: Contemporary Design
(1970 to Today)
Museum Collection: Modern and Contemporary Jewellery
(1940 to Today)
Level 2
Museum Collection: Decorative Arts from the Renaissance to 1930
Museum Collection: Cabinet of Curiosities
Museum Collection: Glass in All Its Forms
Design Lab
Photo MMFA, Denis Farley.
Photo MMFA, Denis Farley.
Photo MMFA, Denis Farley.
Photo MMFA, Denis Farley.
Stunning, provocative, elegant and playful—those are just some of the words that can be used to describe the presentation of the Museum’s decorative arts and design collection, unveiled in 2012. It showcases, as never before, the close to 900 objects—furniture, glass, silverware, textiles, ceramics and industrial design—on display.
The two levels of the Liliane and David M. Stewart Pavilion were redesigned and reconfigured to encompass all seven centuries of the Museum’s decorative arts collection, bringing the most contemporary design to the fore and arranging the works in twenty-five thematic groupings.
Architecture
What garners attention in this building is the elegant suspended stairway with glass banisters and bronze handrails. The wide openings needed for it, as well as the overall horizontality of the pavilion’s design, relieve what might have been a confining expanse of gallery space with heavy, low ceilings. This style of architecture has proved ideal for the display of three-dimensional objects. Gone are most of the partitions and walls that had been added in order to hang paintings; they have been replaced by display cases and platforms that follow the horizontal rhythms of the pavilion’s interior. The newly installed overhead band—a streak of brilliant red—unifies the space and carries the eye from one level to another, creating a singular connection between the Renaissance and twenty-first-century design.
David M. Carter (director), Robert M. Cummings (donor), Sean Murphy (president), Fred Lebensold - ARCOP (architect)
