Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec

The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) is an art museum in Quebec City, Canada, situated within National Battlefields Park on the Plains of Abraham. As the national museum of the province of Quebec, it serves as the living memory of Quebec art and artists. The institution's mandate is to make known, promote, and preserve Quebec art from ancient to contemporary periods, while also ensuring a place for international art through acquisitions and exhibitions. The museum complex comprises four buildings, three purpose-built for the museum and one a former provincial prison, which collectively house over 42,000 works dating from the 17th century to the present day.

The museum's origins trace to March 1920, when cabinet minister Athanase David announced a provincial initiative to support Quebec artists through state purchases, part of a broader program to define the Quebec nation championed by Premier Lomer Gouin and organized under his successor, Louis-Alexandre Taschereau. A five-man jury selected works emphasizing a common rural past and innovative trends. The legislature passed the Act Respecting Museums in the Province of Quebec in 1922, providing funding for museum construction. Construction of the first building began in 1928, and the institution opened to the public as the Musée de la province de Québec on June 5, 1933, initially housing provincial archives, natural science collections, and fine arts. The natural science collection was removed in 1962, and the institution was renamed the Musée du Québec the following year. The provincial archives relocated to Université Laval in 1979, leaving the institution devoted exclusively to art. It became a provincial Crown corporation in 1983 under the National Museums Act. The museum received its current name in 2002.

The museum's collection includes over 42,000 works spanning from the 17th century to the present day. It primarily focuses on works produced in Quebec or by Quebec artists, encompassing paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, prints, and decorative art objects. The holdings also include works from other parts of Canada and the rest of the world, alongside a significant collection of Inuit art. The Inuit collection was greatly expanded in 2005 and 2006 through a major donation of 2,635 Inuit artworks by collector Raymond Brousseau with Hydro-Quebec, forming the Ilippunga collection. A museum library has been accessible to the public since 1987.

A signature work in the collection is Jean-Paul Riopelle's monumental Hommage à Rosa Luxemburg, acquired in 2000. This 40-meter-long spray-paint piece consists of 30 tableaux depicting animal silhouettes and everyday objects, and is permanently displayed in a dedicated space within the Pierre Lassonde Pavilion passageway. Other historical and artistic highlights include Charles Alexander's large-scale L'Assemblée des six comtés à Saint-Charles-sur-Richelieu, en 1837, Horatio Walker's Labour aux premières lueurs du jour, and Ludger Larose's La Serre. The museum also holds early religious art from New France, 18th-century portraits, and significant decorative arts and design from the 1950s onward, including pieces related to Expo 67 and Montreal's Olympic Park. In 2003, the museum acquired watercolors by Benjamin Fisher representing Quebec City, which had been discovered at Balliol College, Oxford.

The museum complex is located in Battlefield Park, near the site of the 1759 Battle of the Plains of Abraham. It consists of four interconnected pavilions linked by a tunnel network. The Gérard-Morisset Pavilion, the original Beaux-Arts building designed by Wilfrid Lacroix with facade reliefs by Joseph-Émile Brunet, opened in 1933 and was renovated in 2018. The Charles Baillairgé Pavilion is a former prison designed by Charles Baillairgé in 1867 and modeled after the Auburn Correctional Facility in New York. It housed inmates until 1970, was acquired by the museum in 1987, and renovated by architects Charles Dorval and Louis Fortin between 1989 and 1991 to include four galleries and preserved jail cells. The Central Pavilion, a glass and granite pyramid also designed by Dorval and Fortin, was built during the same renovation period to serve as a visitor center connecting the first two pavilions. The Pierre Lassonde Pavilion, a glass and steel structure designed by Rem Koolhaas's Office for Metropolitan Architecture with Shohei Shigematsu and Provencher Roy et Associés, opened in 2016, doubling the museum's exhibition space to 36,700 square meters. The Julie and Christian Lassonde sculpture garden, bordering the museum, opened in 1993 and features works by artists including Jean-Paul Riopelle, Claude Tousignant, Armand Vaillancourt, and Charles Daudelin.

The museum is located in La Cité-Limoilou, Quebec City, Canada. It operates as a provincial Crown corporation and is affiliated with the Canadian Museums Association, the Canadian Heritage Information Network, and the Virtual Museum of Canada. A non-profit foundation supports its activities and acquisitions. The museum actively engages the public through major international exhibitions, such as the 1965 Tutankhamun Treasures, the 1986 French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist exhibition from the Soviet Union, the 1998 Rodin exhibition, and the 2008 Louvre exhibition. In 2025, the museum will host the exhibition Niki de Saint Phalle, The 1980s and 1990s, Art Unleashed. The institution also champions contemporary Quebec artists through the MNBAQ Contemporary Art Award, presented in partnership with the RBC Foundation, which uniquely combines an exhibition, a cash award, a publication, and an acquisition of the artist's works.