The MHM set out to incorporate art into the new museum, actually a network of art, says project manager of the new building Helen Malkin.<\/p>\n
Art will play a more prominent role at the new MHM, as pieces from numerous artists, including Baier\u2019s creation and a remarkable stained-glass piece from an iconic Quebec artist will be permanently installed, as the new museum design sets out to integrate architecture and art in a deeply intentional way, ensuring each element contributes to the overall narrative and emotional experience for visitors.<\/p>\n
Baier\u2019s Candelabra will sit upon the museum\u2019s rooftop terrace, a luminous sculpture featuring a network of connected polished stainless-steel lines and points of light set against the Montreal sky, constructed with tubes and fiber-optic lights to create a constellation-like formation that changes depending on perspective.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Candelabre-2-Baier-MHM-1024x576.png\")
Candelabra by Nicolas Baier, at the Montreal Holocaust Museum. (Supplied photo)<\/p>\n
The sentiment is reminiscent of countless survivor stories about imprisonment in ghettos and concentration camps where the only form of escape was looking to the night sky, according to the MHM\u2019s statement, \u201cinspired by the human impulse to connect stars into meaningful patterns, the work reflects bonds built between individuals, communities, and generations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, Baier was struck by author Primo Levi\u2019s accounts of his time in a concentration camp, \u201cwhere he spoke of the sky and nature, of their beauty and their cosmic indifference to human suffering.\u201d That, Baier told The CJN, \u201cmade the idea that hope lay in human resilience, memory, and solidarity among prisoners all the more striking. As much as I could, I understood his reasoning and his feelings. But the stars, I told myself, can also help us believe: That an elsewhere, and beyond, interstellar (perhaps more just, reasonable and sensitive) really exists.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not religious, but a product of a Catholic education, Baier told The CJN he was always astonished by the tenet of \u201cYou are dust, and to dust you shall return,\u201d which he says clashed with the idea of \u200b\u200blife after death, eternity, and promises made to every believer. \u201cIn a way, we are all truly made of stardust, and if we think in the very long term, what makes us up, and our entire planet, might return to that state, through a very slow recycling of atoms, on our timescale. This puts current events into perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n
While he sought celestial inspiration or at least a means to inspire it in others, rather than merely reproducing traditional constellations, Baier created a new network based on actual astronomical data from a June sky above Montreal.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Candelabre-8-Baier-MHM-1024x576.png\")
Candelabra by Nicolas Baier, at the Montreal Holocaust Museum, at night. (Supplied photo)<\/p>\n
From a specific vantage point on the terrace, the dispersed lines of Candelabra will create the shape of a sphere, \u201cevoking our shared planet and humanity.\u201d This aspect, creating a\u00a0distorted projection requiring viewers to move around the object for the fullest understanding, is also central but came later in the design process. \u201cIt was originally to highlight a very simple concept:\u00a0the fact that hope exists, at least initially, in the mind of the one who sees it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Holocaust was marked by the systematic destruction of Jewish life, devastation of entire communities, and severing of social bonds, reads a MHM statement. \u201cAt a time when antisemitism and other forms of hate are on the rise, the sculpture serves as a reminder that societies are shaped by the networks we build and protect, and that even in darkness, light endures.\u201d<\/p>\n
Project manager Malkin, also a jury member and former MHM president, said \u201cwhat stood out about his proposal was its poetic quality<\/a>. Other proposals were more literal, but his was evocative and open to interpretation.\u201d The goal, she says, was to choose a highly qualified artist with broad recognition who could see an impressive turnkey project \u2013 budgeted at approximately $550,000 \u2013 through from conception and design to fabrication and installation. The competition was held in accordance with Quebec\u2019s public buildings art and architecture integration policy, mandating approximately one percent of a construction budget be dedicated to commissioning a work of art.<\/p>\n MHM co-president and Holocaust survivor Rachel Gropper said Baier\u2019s proposal moved the seven-person jury \u2013 chaired by artist Martha Townsend and including visual art specialists, architects, and representatives of the Ministry of Culture and MHM \u2013 because it expresses the importance of human connection. \u201cIn a place devoted to memory and education, this work reminds us that each individual life matters, and that together we have the responsibility to uphold compassion and hope.\u201d<\/p>\n Another major feature of the MHM artwork will be the memorial wall running about 42 metres (140 feet) long and engraved with some 4,500 names of towns and cities affected by the Holocaust, beginning outside the building, passing through it, and extending into the memorial garden.<\/p>\n Also coming to the new site is a major, 56-year-old iconic stained-glass work by<\/a> <\/a>Marcelle Ferron, originally commissioned<\/a> as a tribute to six million Holocaust victims. Ferron\u2019s five-meter floor-to-ceiling panels were completed in 1970 and installed in the atrium of the Samuel Bronfman House on the downtown corner of C\u00f4te-des-Neiges Road and Docteur-Penfield Avenue in the former national headquarters of the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC). The CJC turned the building over to Concordia University in 1999, when it moved its national office to Ottawa and relocated regional offices, and CJC\u2019s successor and the artwork\u2019s new patron \u2013 the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) \u2013 donated the work to the MHM.<\/p>\n Ferron was a renowned painter and stained-glass artist in the Quebec modern art scene, known for her bold use of colour and light, and some of her work is prominently integrated into several Montreal metro stations. She was also one of the original signatories of\u00a0Quebec\u2019s Refus global manifesto, which called for rejecting artistic, social, and psychological norms and values of society in the post-war era, and representing a hard cultural shift towards Quebec\u2019s Quiet Revolution.<\/p>\n Integrating this work by this important artist into the new building on Saint-Laurent boulevard was challenging, says Malkin, owing to its total height of approximately 5 metres (16 feet) but architects and lighting designers have managed to incorporate it into a custom-designed stairwell. There are additional artworks as well, including a forest-themed installation, and an artistic reinterpretation of an eternal flame using an existing installation from the current smaller museum space at the Federation CJA building in west-end Snowdon.<\/p>\n In addition to the artwork, says Malkin, the new three-storey museum \u2013 which will double the current permanent exhibit space to 10,000-square-feet \u2013 with a permanent exhibition of artifacts and oral histories, temporary exhibition gallery on the Holocaust, genocides, and human rights, classrooms for school groups, and public spaces, including a 150-seat auditorium and a multi-functional room, is clearly \u201ca legacy project,\u201d for the museum, the Jewish and survivor community, and for the city at large.<\/p>\n The $135-million project is moving forward steadily, and some specialized tours of the site are beginning, while the building nears completion. Substantial completion is expected by mid-December, followed by four months for installation, technical setup, and staff preparation, and artwork completed in time for the soft opening, sometime between May 1 and July 1 next year. Official inauguration is expected in fall 2027.<\/p>\n Joel has spent his entire adult life scribbling. For two decades, he freelanced for more than a dozen North American and European trade publications, writing on home decor, HR, agriculture, defense technologies and more. Having lived at 14 addresses in and around Greater Montreal, for 17 years he worked as reporter for a local community newspaper, covering the education, political and municipal beats in seven cities and boroughs. He loves to bike, swim, watch NBA and kvetch about politics.<\/p>\n![\"Joel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Headshot-e1742321976617.webp.webp\")
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