Montreal Museum of Fine Arts presents

VIEWS OF WITHIN – Picturing the Spaces We Inhabit

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) invites the public to rediscover the indoors and reflect on the relationship to this space disrupted by months of lockdown. As areas for privacy, family life, rest, or work, interior spaces take on different meanings depending on who occupies them. Existing between boundaries and borders, the inside can be understood from the perspective of home life, imprisonment, feminism, the spiritual dimension and even politics. The exhibition Views of Within: Picturing the Spaces We Inhabit highlights these multiple viewpoints through the eyes of about twenty Quebec and Canadian artists represented in the Museum’s collection.

Moving Day

Paul André (1933-1983), Moving Day, 1972. MMFA, gift of Mrs. Mathilde van de Pas de Goldis, Baroness Eszenaysi.
Photo MMFA, Jean-François Brière

Installed on level S2 of the MMFA’s Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion, this exhibition brings together close to 40 paintings, photographs, installations and sculptures that present one or more evocations of interior space. Divided into five themes of The Studio, In-Between Spaces, Utopian Space, Private Space: A Place For Care, and Domestic Interior, the exhibition features works by Kim Adams, Raymonde April, Paul André, Michel Campeau, Chris Cran, Donigan Cumming, Pierre Dorion, Serge Lemoyne, Christine Major, Agnes Nanogak Goose, Kim Ondaatje, Barbara Todd, as well as recent acquisitions by Oreka James, Guillaume Lachapelle, Caroline Monnet, Natalie Reis, Joanne Tod, and Martha Townsend.

“These artists open the doors to show us different ways of living in this space and navigating through it. Depicting the interior as a domestic space, a place for creation, for reflection, for privacy, for healing, these works can be interpreted in many ways and draw us into a collective dream,” explained eunice belidor, Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Curator of Quebec and Canadian Contemporary Art (1945 to Today), MMFA.

“A collection can only come alive if it speaks to the present, and that’s exactly what this exhibition does. Drawn from our reserves, these interior scenes evoke a reality that the pandemic has heightened for us. Our relationship with interior space – whether physical, psychological or digital – has taken on a whole new dimension,” added Mary-Dailey Desmarais, Chief Curator, MMFA.

For information on opening hours and ticket prices visit: www.mbam.qc.ca