About
the collection
The Musée d’art de Joliette, which began as an ambitious idea from Father Wilfrid Corbeil, CSV, has become the largest regional art museum in Québec. For nearly fifty years, the MAJ has enhanced its permanent collection with over 8,300 artworks and objects. As it continues to expand, the MAJ collection is now structured around the following four key focus areas: contemporary art, historical art, material culture, and archives. With artworks that cover a vast range of artistic disciplines, from painting to sculpture to new media, the MAJ collection is considered a national treasure, among other reasons, for its collection of Québec art and ancient European art.
Key focus areas
In 1943, the MAJ collection was in its infancy when the Joliette Seminary, under the leadership of the Clercs de Saint-Viateur de Joliette, acquired 8 works by Québec artists. Since then, the collection, much like the MAJ, has continuously grown and evolved. Recently, we completely revised the collection’s focus areas in order to better reflect the times we live in and the current state of the collection’s holdings. This revision was undertaken with respect for the history of its constitution, while forging a new vision for its development as carried forward by the institution. While the majority of the collection’s objects are from Québec, the new focus areas will no longer include geographical references, in order to encompass all of its holdings as a whole.