Two new exhibitions to discover
The team at the Saint Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal Museum was happy to reconnect with visitors on Sunday, May 28, on the occasion of Montreal Museums Day.
Its reopening (after an interruption of nine months, which allowed the completion of preparatory work for the major sanctuary development project), is accompanied by the launch of two new exhibitions. The first, Saint Joseph Likes Montreal, a temporary exhibition, is organized specially in honour of the 375th anniversary of the founding of the city. The second exhibition, A World in a Crèche, is part of the tradition established for several decades by the Oratory Museum, which permanently presents a selection of crèches from its collections.
Saint Joseph Likes Montreal offers nearly 150 works of art, objects, books and documents related to Saint Joseph. The exhibition focuses on three major themes that allow visitors to get to know Saint Joseph better, to follow the evolution of his cult, and finally to discover the intimate ties between Saint Joseph and Montreal. Several remarkable pieces from the collections of the Oratory Museum are on display: a very beautiful sculpture of Saint Joseph and the Child by Sylvia Daoust (1902-2004), an impressive painting by Napoléon Bourassa (1827- 1916) illustrating the death of Saint Joseph and, finally, three magnificent stained-glass windows by Guido Nincheri (1885-1973) recently acquired by the Oratory thanks to a gift from the Religious of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul in Quebec.
The exhibition A World in a Crèche brings together close to a hundred representations of the Nativity, from as many countries. The crèches, each more beautiful than the last, are grouped by continents, allowing visitors to take an original tour of the world thanks to the universal theme of birth; here that of the infant Jesus. An exhibition that will please both young and old!
