The new pavilion at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) dedicated to renowned Canadian artist Jean Paul Riopelle is rapidly taking shape, with its grand opening scheduled for one year from now. While awaiting the installation of the painter and sculptor's masterworks, construction workers at the site in Quebec's capital city can already appreciate the exceptional views of the St. Lawrence River offered by the building's terraces.
The angular structure features a lightweight framework combining wood, steel, and glass materials. This innovative design allows it to blend harmoniously into the densely developed environment at the heart of the Plains of Abraham park. The building's unique geometry emerged from practical constraints, as architect Éric Gauthier explains during a press tour of the construction site.
The new structure has been built above the museum's existing underground storage facility, which sits beneath the former reception pavilion. This subterranean space is all that remains of the old building, which was topped by a skylight that workers demolished with surgical precision to avoid compromising the conservation of stored artworks through vibrations, dust, or water damage.
Building on an existing structure presented considerable challenges for the construction team. "It's a bit like a star map," explains architect Éric Gauthier, pointing to the ground. "You can place a column there, another there, and one here! That created more or less bilateral triangles." The anchor points of the new structure determined the building's direction while giving it a distinctive character.
This geometric constraint led to an innovative architectural approach. "It gave us the opportunity to create a geometry that recedes," observes Gauthier about this pavilion, whose levels move away from the street as visitors progress from one floor to another. "It's somewhat the opposite of the monumentality displayed by the Pierre Lassonde Pavilion, which advances toward Grande Allée."
The Riopelle Space was designed by Quebec firm FABG, which is also responsible for the Tranquille Esplanade in Montreal's Quartier des spectacles, the renovation of Espace St-Denis, and the new paddocks for the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal. The four-story building spans 64,583 square feet, with one-third dedicated to exhibitions.
Orange tarps still cover most of the facades that will allow sunlight to penetrate through curtain walls of glass. The triple-thickness glass is perforated with countless small silkscreen dots to prevent geese from Isle-aux-Grues and elsewhere from colliding with the pavilion. "There's a lot of invisible work," explains MNBAQ Director General Jean-Luc Murray, referring to the building's mechanical room. "A museum demands enormous attention to environmental conditions, temperature, and humidity," he says amid the cacophony of construction saws.
This architectural modesty contrasts with the heavy silhouettes of the museum's two other pavilions that flank the new building on either side: the Gérard-Morisset, a Beaux-Arts style edifice inaugurated in 1931, and the Charles-Baillairgé, a former prison with Neo-Renaissance influence dating from 1867.
The curtain masking the behind-the-scenes work will be partially lifted in a glass-walled room that will allow curious visitors to observe the restoration, unveiling, and quarantine of artworks—typically hidden work that will now be visible to the public.
The pavilion, whose definitive name will be announced later, will showcase an exceptional corpus of more than 500 works created by Jean Paul Riopelle. This number continues to grow, as the ongoing construction project has had a ripple effect among patrons who own works by the Montreal artist who died at the seigneurial manor of Isle-aux-Grues in 2002.
The highlight of visits will be "Hommage à Rosa Luxemburg," a 131-foot-long fresco created in 1992 with spray paint. This masterpiece will be hung in a circular space designed to promote immersion in the artwork.
Three works from the collection are currently located in the office or official apartment of Premier François Legault in Quebec City. These include the bronze "Floraison" (1973), the canvas "Sans titre" (1960), and the lithograph "L'original rouge" (1981), whose loan will end in November 2026, one month after the general elections.
The initial budget for the Riopelle Space was 44 million Canadian dollars. However, it doubled during the course of the project to reach 84 million dollars. Funding is shared between the Ministry of Culture (44 million), the City of Quebec (5 million), patrons of the Jean Paul Riopelle Foundation (25 million), and the MNBAQ Foundation (10 million).
Like the former reception pavilion, the new space will be accessible through its facade facing the Wolfe Monument, which marks the precise location where the victor of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham died from his wounds. A partially glazed tunnel will connect this brand-new building to the Pierre Lassonde Pavilion, inaugurated in 2016 at the site of a century-old convent that was then considered without value. The landscaping will include references to the Laurentian forest, so dear to the Quebec painter.
