{"id":889934,"date":"2026-10-21T20:16:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T20:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/889934\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T20:16:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T20:16:12","slug":"quebec-museum-opens-61m-pavilion-celebrating-local-artist-jean-paul-riopelle-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/889934\/","title":{"rendered":"Qu\u00e9bec museum opens $61m pavilion celebrating local artist Jean Paul Riopelle – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new pavilion at the Mus\u00e9e National des Beaux-Arts du Qu\u00e9bec<\/a> (MNBAQ) opens tomorrow (22 October). The C$84m ($61m) Espace Riopelle-Michael Audain Pavilion is named for both Jean Paul Riopelle<\/a> (1923-2002), the province\u2019s most famous Modern artist, and Michael Audain, a philanthropist and co-founder of the Jean Paul Riopelle Foundation. The project was first announced in 2022<\/a>, but the budget more than doubled<\/a> since then\u2014with the Qu\u00e9bec government contributing more than C$40m.<\/p>\n

Spearheading the project, the Jean Paul Riopelle Foundation (which has provided at least C$20m for the pavilion) was driven by a desire to realise the artist\u2019s dream of establishing a foundation at MNBAQ. Audain and his wife, Yoshiko Karasawa, together with the mining magnate Pierre Lassonde, have donated more than 60 important works by Riopelle and his contemporaries for the new space. Including the value of the gifted works, Audain has contributed more than C$90m to the project. All told, the pavilion represents one of the largest philanthropic donations in Qu\u00e9bec\u2019s cultural history.<\/p>\n

Designed by the Montreal-based FABG Architectes to evoke Riopelle\u2019s rustic home studio, the three-storey pavilion spans more than 5,000 sq. m. It has room for four exhibitions, including a major survey exploring the breadth of Riopelle\u2019s career\u2014from his Automatiste works to his 1950s \u201cmosaic\u201d abstract paintings and prints inspired by Qu\u00e9bec\u2019s landscape. A specially built circular gallery is dedicated entirely to the artist\u2019s 40m-long triptych L\u2019Hommage \u00e0 Rosa Luxemburg (1992).<\/p>\n

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Riopelle\u2019s 40m-long L\u2019Hommage \u00e0 Rosa Luxemburg (1992) is a centrepiece of the new pavilion Photo: Louis H\u00e9bert, MNBAQ<\/p>\n

Communing with nature<\/p>\n

In a nod to the artist\u2019s focus on the natural world, the pavilion opens to expansive views of both the Plains of Abraham and the Saint Lawrence River. It also features two covered outdoor terraces. And its landscape design incorporates plants from the boreal forest, the rugged terrain of the artist\u2019s native northern Qu\u00e9bec.<\/p>\n

Audain tells The Art Newspaper that Riopelle\u2014whom he has admired since childhood and began collecting in earnest in the 1990s\u2014is \u201carguably Canada\u2019s most internationally known artist. He broke new ground by painting the landscape in a way that no one had ever painted it before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Audain compares Riopelle to Paul Gauguin<\/a>, noting that the 19th-century Frenchman \u201conly used a pallet knife on smaller works. Riopelle was the first to do entire landscapes using only a palette knife. I think the most important and innovative aspect of Riopelle\u2019s work was disaggregating the landscape and reducing it to strokes of a palette knife.\u201d Audain notes that the artist had a set of knives made especially for this purpose. \u201cRiopelle became closer to the landscape than any other artist before him,\u201d Audain adds.<\/p>\n

\u201cRiopelle finally has a space entirely dedicated to him,\u201d says the MNBAQ\u2019s director, Jean-Luc Murray. \u201cThe mus\u00e9e has long wanted to showcase his work while making it more accessible, and the Espace Riopelle-Michael Audain Pavilion does so brilliantly. We are excited to be welcoming the public to this magnificent new building, which creates a nuanced interplay between nature, architecture and the larger-than-life work of this influential Qu\u00e9bec and Canadian artist.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new pavilion at the Mus\u00e9e National des Beaux-Arts du Qu\u00e9bec (MNBAQ) opens tomorrow (22 October). The C$84m…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":889935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,103,229,88,373111,373110,282186,6049,6359],"class_list":["post-889934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-jean-paul-riopelle","tag-musee-national-des-beaux-arts-du-quebec","tag-museum-expansions","tag-museums","tag-museums-heritage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=889934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/889935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}