This didactic exhibition on the conservation of paintings was prepared to complement the exhibition entitled ' Borduas et les Automatistes' presented at Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. (Paul-Emile Borduas 1905-1960). It is the result of a close collaboration between the Museum and the Centre de conservation du Québec.

As an independent service unit under the responsibility of the ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec, the Centre de conservation du Québec restores a large number of objects and works of art each year. In addition, the Centre offers a wide range of expertise services, particulary in the field of preventive conservation, to various museums and institutions in Québec.

Although the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal has its own conservation laboratory, headed by Marie-Noël Challan Belval with the assistance of Serge Collin, the preparation of the Borduas exhibition involved an enormous amount of work. This could not have been completed without the participation of the Centre, whose specialists worked on some twenty paintings. The exhibition shows the various steps taken by specialists at the Centre to restore damaged works (of the Paris period 1959-1960), as well as the techniques employed to give back these works their original appearance.

The texts were written by Colette Naud, Michael O'Malley and Anne Lapointe, conservators in the Paintings lab at the Centre de conservation du Québec.

Link to the website: Conservation of works by Borduas