MONTREAL.- The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC) presents Skyscrapers by the Roots: Reflections on Late Modernism, from March 6 to August 10, 2025, in the MAC’s temporary space at Place Ville Marie. Curated by François LeTourneux, curator at the MAC, this new exhibition explores the issues of late modernism through works produced over the last decade by Shannon Bool, Kapwani Kiwanga, Rachel Rose, and Jonathan Schouela, a new film installation by David Hartt, as well as works by Lynne Cohen and François Dallegret produced in the 1960s and 1970s. A mural by comic book artist Lando, inspired by the work of David Hartt, will complete the exhibition.

From the past to the present, these works highlight the many sociocultural repercussions of modernism in the spheres of personal life, work, consumption, and the performing arts. They also echo the MAC’s current location and site of its first exhibition in 1965, Place Ville Marie, the emblematic point of origin of the largest “underground city” in the world and a symbol of the modernization and renewal of downtown Montreal during the Quiet Revolution.

With a renewed look on modernism, Skyscrapers by the Roots offers a surprising perspective on the influence the movement continues to exert on our living spaces. By questioning the physical experience of humans in a built environment, the exhibition invites the public to reflect on the lifestyles these spaces implied, for whom they were designed, and how they still influence both our identity and our interactions.

A Retrofuturistic mural

In connection with the exhibition, the mural Horizon, illustrated by British comic book artist Lando and designed for David Hartt’s film installation, will transform the interior walls of the MAC at Place Ville Marie into a psychedelic and retrofuturist story. Elijah and Isaiah, Hartt’s nephews, wander from the private spaces of home to the public spaces of the arcade, the street, and the urban skyline, in an imaginary city dotted with megastructures, some elements of which recall Montreal.

“The history of the MAC is closely linked to the modernist movement that defines downtown Montreal. Sixty years after its first exhibition at Place Ville Marie, the museum, through a fantastic combination of circumstances, presents an exhibition that highlights the very origins of this space even as the museum is installed there again during its ongoing transformation. This exhibition brings us back to the roots that allow us to better understand the present.” —Stéphan La Roche, Director of the MAC

“The MAC is pleased to take advantage of its time at Place Ville Marie, a hub for the international style in Montreal, to present works that address late modernism in architecture, a movement initially anchored in a perspective of social progress but whose ideology and achievements have also provoked numerous criticisms. We therefore found it important to bring works from the 1960s and 1970s into dialogue with more recent and original readings of this movement.” —François LeTourneux, curator of the exhibition and curator at the MAC