‘I don’t play to lose’ – how Nathalie Bondil threw open the doors of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts GlobeArts
If you visit the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, you can gaze at many treasures, works painted by the likes of Rembrandt, Monet and Dégas. Or you can try making your own masterpiece in a studio equipped with free art supplies where nobody is going to tell you that you aren’t the next Picasso.
“I am absolutely convinced art and culture are key to our togetherness,” Bondil says. “How can we make bridges? The museum is a great place where you can address different cultures, where you can gather people, where there is this benevolent neutrality.
“It’s remarkable,” museum consultant Gail Lord said. “Montreal is not the largest city in Canada and it’s not a particularly museum-going city; it’s a festival city. … She’s doing a brilliant job; she’s one of the leading art gallery directors in the world.” Bondil’s missionary zeal – and her ability as an outsider to sidestep any tensions between linguistic communities – has also boosted fundraising at the MMFA. Overturning some received wisdom on Quebec philanthropy, she has built new levels of support among francophones while maintaining old links with the anglophone and Jewish communities.
Bondil is also reaching out to Indigenous communities: The museum has signed a memorandum with Avataq, the cultural organization for Quebec’s Inuit territory, Nunavik, to move its Montreal office into the museum in 2021. “It will be their embassy in the South,” said Bondil, who wants to add a degree in Indigenous studies to her credentials.
Last year, Bondil imported a Picasso show initiated by Paris’s Musée du quai Branly, which juxtaposed the modernist’s paintings with the African sculptures and masks that inspired him. In Montreal, Bondil added contemporary African-American art to the mix and then borrowed a side exhibit of work by black Canadian artists from the ROM – to which she also added some Quebec artists. Similarly, Couturissime is accompanied by a showcase of 10 contemporary Quebec designers.
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