Museum to get new name in move from Old Montreal
Mémoire des Montréalais to set up in bigger space in Quartier des Spectacles
The Centre d’histoire de Montréal will be replaced by a new museum called the MEM, which will open in 2021 in a brand-new building at the corner of Ste-Catherine St. and the Main, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante announced Monday.
“This new space will be dedicated to revealing the Montreal identity,” Plante said. “The MEM will continue the work of the Centre d’histoire to shine a light on the evolution of this city, in terms of its architecture, its distinctive elements, its demographics and the role of its different communities in the urban fabric.”
The museum has outgrown the former firehall in Old Montreal in which it has operated for the past 35 years, Plante said. It makes sense that a modern museum that is to be a “window into the Montreal identity ” should be located at an iconic intersection in the heart of the Quartier des Spectacles, she added.
The MEM, short for Mémoire des Montréalais, will rent a 23,840-square-foot space — triple the space of the current Centre d’histoire — on the ground floor of the Carré St-Laurent building, under construction at the southwest corner of St-Laurent Blvd. and Ste-Catherine St.
The Centre d’histoire de Montréal, currently located at 335 Place d’Youville in Old Montreal, will close its doors at the end of 2019, and the MEM is expected to open in 2021. To bridge the gap, a mobile museum, dubbed the MEMobile, will continue the educational functions of the museum, which is visited by thousands of schoolchildren each year.
The revamped museum will cost the city more, as rent alone will be about $1.8 million a year. The operating budget of the new museum, which is to employ cutting-edge interactive technologies, is not yet known.
The city will launch a process this week to choose a multi-disciplinary team of professionals to develop the new museum. The MEM will consist of a large hall, four exhibition rooms, a café, a projection room, a studio for recording visitors’ impressions, and more.
Finding sites for such important
That’s Montreal ... Montreal is unique because of its diversity.
institutions as museums in the densely built downtown core is not easy, Plante said, and she described the city’s decision to rent space in a building it doesn’t own as “creative.”
Plante announced in May that a site promised by the previous administration to the McCord Museum was going to be turned into a green space. Her administration has proposed three other sites for the McCord, which has also outgrown its location on Sherbrooke St. across from McGill University.
A new use for the firehall on Place d’Youville has not been decided, Plante said, but “given its unique character and the architectural history, we want to give it an important vocation and take good care of it.”
Montreal’s diversity was well represented in a live dramatic presentation and a video about the new museum at Monday’s press conference. Plante said her administration was not about to repeat mistakes made in the past, notably in video materials promoting Montreal’s 375th that left out non-white Montrealers.
“Since this museum is about the history of Montreal, and especially the different communities of Montreal, it just makes sense to have that diversity represented,” Plante said. “That’s Montreal ... Montreal is unique because of its diversity.”