MONTREAL.- At the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 2009 was a record year in terms of gifts of artworks. Thanks to the exceptional generosity of a great many artists, art dealers, collectors and patrons, the museum was the beneficiary of works worth nearly $4,800,000 this year—the most ever in the Musée’s history. But beyond the numbers, Quebecers have enriched our public Collection with pieces of inestimable value. Some of them are currently on display in the exhibition Major Gifts which not only highlights the museological qualities of these remarkable works, but also pays eloquent tribute to the knowledge, discerning eye and vision of their donors.

Adams/Gaucher/Goodwin/Kiefer/Molinari/Racine/Simpson/Tousignant

Few museums own a Kiefer. The Musée has two. Joining the work donated last year by Irving Ludmer is the masterly Die Frauen der Antike (Women of Antiquity), 1999, a gift of Rosaire Archambault, Pierre Bourgie and Robert-Jean Chénier. Thanks to Christian Mailhot, Natali Ruedy and Jacques Mailhot, twenty drawings in Rober Racine’s series devoted to vultures, titled Fantasmes fragiles, 2003–2004, and eighty-five of his Pages-Miroirs, 1980–1994, have been added to the museum’s holdings of his work.

Artist Claude Tousignant graciously offered the splendid installation L’œuvre au noir, 2008, which brought his retrospective earlier this year to a brilliant conclusion, and La grande ligne perdue, 1969, which is on view in the stairwell leading down to BWR Hall. Guy Molinari donated two major paintings shown at the museum in the retrospective devoted to his late father: Structure jaune-rouge no 2, 1963, and Dyptique triangulaire, 1970. This year, Germaine Gaucher presented the Musée with the largest canvas in Yves Gaucher’s grey series: THG-III M 69,1969, adding to her gift last year of a spectacular diptych that can be seen in the show Major Gifts. Ann Birks gave us an emotionally charged photographic work by Lorna Simpson, ID (Identify-Identity), 1990—also part of Major Gifts—in honour of the contribution made by Marc Mayer as the museum’s previous director.

Galerie René Blouin and René Blouin himself provided three magnificent drawings by Betty Goodwin: Untitled (Moving Towards Fire), 1985; Lying Figure, 1990, and Untitled (Figure/Ladder series), 1996. An exhibition this past summer at the Musée paid tribute to this key Canadian artist. Christiane Chassay donated a work by Kim Adams—Model: Decoy Homes, 1987—that was featured in the museum’s survey exhibition of his art. Yet other significant pieces, by Sylvain Cousineau, Michel Goulet and Charles Sandison, to name only a few, have also been added to the Musée Collection.