Expansion of the Museum of Contemporary Art | Quebec and Ottawa add 56 million

The two levels of government, federal and provincial, will inject an additional 56 million into the expansion project of the Museum of Contemporary Art, financing the work to the tune of 105 million, learned The Press. An announcement that will allow the management of the museum to return to tender with a total budget of 116.5 million.

The expansion project of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC), on hold for a year, will come back to life thanks to the injection of new public funds. The announcement will be made this Friday by the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, and the Minister of Culture and Communications of Quebec, Mathieu Lacombe.

The Ministry of Culture and Communications, which had already committed to investing 30 million in this project, will increase its investment by 25 million for a total of 55 million. For its part, Canadian Heritage, which had put just over $18 million on the table (from the Building Canada fund), is adding $31 million (from the Investing in Canada infrastructure program), for a total of $50 million.

As for public funds, we are talking about an increase of $56 million. The rest will come from the private sector, as was already planned, thanks to the Museum Foundation, which will contribute 11.5 million. In total, the budget for the MAC transformation project therefore goes from 57 million to 116.5 million.

In an interview given to The Press a few months ago, Minister Mathieu Lacombe indicated that the MAC file was a priority and that he was going to take care of it “personally”. “We cannot afford to have a museum institution as important as the MAC closed for two years without the work taking off,” he said.

This new financial arrangement should enable the MAC to return to a call for tenders, probably in the fall. In an ideal scenario, the works could thus begin in the spring of 2024. It would take 28 months before they are finished. Another six months would be needed to repatriate the permanent collection. In this case, the reopening would probably take place in 2027.

The MAC’s transformation work aims to double the museum’s exhibition space and showcase its permanent collection. The aim of the reorganization of the interior spaces is also to improve the accessibility of the building and of course to modernize it.

Tender canceled in 2022

In the spring of 2022, the Musée d’art contemporain had called for tenders with a total budget of 85.3 million – its budget of 57 million had been increased by Quebec by 25 million a few months before thanks to a special reserve from of the Quebec Infrastructure Plan.

Despite this, the submissions received exceeded expectations “by more than 50%,” according to MAC Director General and Chief Curator John Zeppetelli. The call for tenders split into 25 lots was then canceled in June, even before all the bidders were able to respond.

The project has since been put on hold. The Société québécoise des infrastructures (SQI), which manages the project, then indicated that the MAC, which is a state-owned company, would have to “re-examine the conditions for carrying out the project”.

John Zeppetelli preferred to see his institutional backers to ask them to increase their stake, in order to carry out the project as drawn up by the architectural firm Saucier+Perrotte. Both levels of government ultimately responded favorably to his request.

The decision to leave Place des Arts in the spring of 2021, before completing the call for tenders and having a start date for the work, still raised questions. The MAC has established its temporary headquarters in a much smaller space in Place Ville Marie, which obviously cannot accommodate any large-scale exhibition.

Its permanent collection, largely stored in the museum itself, is no longer accessible to the public either. A moratorium on the purchase of new works is also in effect.

The current version of the MAC expansion project was first presented in the spring of 2018. It had a budget of 44 million. But the work, which was to start in 2019, has been postponed. The budget rose to 57 million, but the pandemic followed and so did the postponements.