MONTRÉAL, Jan. 21, 2026 /CNW/ - The Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MAC) is proud to present the team that will curate the opening exhibition of the new museum, scheduled for 2028. This team will bring together three curators from the MAC along with three guest curators, working under the direction of Audrey Genois, the MAC's Director of Curatorial Affairs. Katsitsanoron Dumoulin-Bush, Joséphine Denis and Valentine Umansky will join MAC curators Mojeanne Behzadi, Mark Lanctôt and François LeTourneux.

The creation of this curatorial team marks a key milestone for the MAC, as the museum begins to realign its activities in anticipation of return of its teams and collection to the new building, and the preparation of the opening program. Within this context, and for the as the MAC prepares to welcome back the public with open arms, the inaugural exhibition will offer a perspective on some of the most compelling practices on the current artistic scene in Quebec. It will provide an opportunity to celebrate Quebec art and the multigenerational exchanges that characterise it, by placing a selection of flagship pieces from the collection in dialogue with the more recent works.

The invited members of the curatorial team were carefully selected based on several criteria, specifically their knowledge of the Quebec arts community, their curatorial approaches, the diversity of their practices and experiences, as well as their complementarity with the expertise of the MAC's curatorial team.

As part of its mandate, the curatorial team will be responsible for defining the theme of the first exhibition of the new MAC, meeting artists during studio visits across Quebec, and supporting them in the production and installation of their works through an ongoing dialogue. Establishing this team also makes it possible to approach this pivotal moment with a wide range of perspectives and expertise.

Quotes

"The opening of the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MAC) represents an exceptional opportunity to fully reaffirm its role as a national museum, while continuing to remain in service of artists and the public. With this new curatorial team, the MAC will showcase the creativity, boldness and vitality of artist from Quebec throughout its first year of the new opening." – Stéphan La Roche, Director, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal

"By creating this team, we affirm our commitment to multiplying our perspectives and offer, from the museum's opening day and beyond, an open, rich and representative curatorial framework for contemporary creation." – Audrey Genois, Director of Curatorial Affairs, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal

About the curators

Mojeanne Behzadi joined the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal as curator in 2023. She is responsible for the Museum's exhibition and event programming.

Recent projects include the 60th anniversary edition of Les Nocturnes du MAC in May 2025, an extensive event of performances, music, DJs and workshops titled A Saturnalia. In 2024 and 2025, she curated mural commissions by Mara Eagle and Caroline Monnet, as well as an outdoor exhibition, Graphic Worlds, highlighting artists working at the intersection of comics, illustrated narratives and contemporary art.

Prior to joining the MAC, Behzadi was assistant curator at the National Gallery of Canada, where she conducted research contributing to Kapwani Kiwanga's representation of Canada at the 60th Venice Art Biennale. From 2016 to 2023, she was director of Art Speaks, an international speaker series on contemporary art. She managed the Lillian and Billy Mauer art collection from 2015 to 2023 and was curator of research and programming at Artexte from 2020 to 2023. Independently, she worked with numerous institutions including the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts where she conceived Trajectories, a contemporary art podcast produced in 2022 about notable artists from Montreal. In 2023 she curated Toward Freedom at Projet Casa in Montreal. The exhibition response to the Woman Life Freedom movement in Iran.

She sits on the board of MOMENTA Biennale d'art contemporain.

Katsitsanoron Dumoulin-Bush is Onkwehonwe/French Canadian from Oshahrhè:'on (Chateauguay), Quebec. They received their BA in Linguistics from Concordia University in 2017. Since then, Kat has worked as a radio DJ, as teacher in Tasiujaq, Eastmain and Kahnawake, as a cultural mediator, as an independent curator, and an artist.

As a writer, they have completed residencies at Artexte (2023) and The Banff Centre (2024). Between 2024 and 2026, Kat was the Indigenous art and design curatorial intern at the MBAM, while being part of MOMENTA's 2025 educational team. They are currently a board member at the CACPA and at MOMENTA biennial.

Haitian curator and writer based in Toronto, Joséphine Denis is Co-Director and Director of Curatorial Initiatives at Black Artists' Networks in Dialogue (BAND) Gallery, where she develops programs and exhibitions rooted in experimentation, collective research, and exchange. Her work engages with diasporic practices by attending to material culture, ritual, and sound, tracing how historical narratives and other forms of memory circulate, persist, and transform across geographies and generations.

She previously contributed to curatorial and public programs at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery (Tkaronto) and SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art (Tiohtià:ke/Montreal). Selected exhibitions include Other Territories (Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris), Amartey Golding: In the Comfort of Embers, and Sandra Brewster: By Way of Communion (The Power Plant). She has written and edited for various contemporary art publications. Raised in Port-au-Prince and later in New York, she grounds her work in the guidance of her kin.

Before being appointed curator in charge of the collection at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal in 2023, Mark Lanctôt, as curator of exhibitions at the MAC, organized over thirty solo and group exhibitions of Quebec, Canadian, and international artists since 2006, and contributed to the production of more than a dozen exhibition catalogues.

Concurrently, in collaboration with artist and independent curator Jonathan Middleton, he developed a series of exhibitions and events entitled The Troubled Pastoral, presented at the Or Gallery (Vancouver and Berlin). He has served on numerous juries and selection committees for, among others, the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the Canada Council for the Arts, the City of Montreal's Public Art Bureau, and the Sobey Art Awards.

More recently, in the MAC's temporary location at Place Ville Marie, he curated the exhibitions of Nelson Henricks and Lili Reynaud-Dewar and has just inaugurated an exhibition of recent MAC acquisitions at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, entitled Comfort and Indifference, which features works by some twenty Quebec artists.

François LeTourneux is Curator and Head of Cultural Programming at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. He has curated monographic exhibitions devoted to the artists Etienne Zack (2010), Jon Pylypchuk (2011), Lynne Cohen (2013–2015), and Janet Werner (2019–2020); and co-curated the exhibitions La Triennale québécoise (2011), Zoo (2012), Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Unstable Presence (2018, in collaboration with SFMOMA), and La machine qui enseignait des airs aux oiseaux (2021), a survey of recent practices bringing together more than thirty artists and contributors around questions of embodied language. More recently, he presented at Place Ville Marie (Montreal) a group exhibition titled Skyscrapers by the Roots: Perspectives on Late Modernism (2025), which included a major commissioned work by Canadian artist David Hartt.

As Head of cultural programming at the MAC, he oversees the museum's program of major lectures, conversations, and artist talks, as well as the annual Max and Iris Stern International Symposia. Among the latter, he curated Manufacturing Exhibitions parts 1 and 2 (2011–2012), Abstraction (2013), and (in collaboration) Remontage/Remixing/Sharing: Technologies, Aesthetics, Politics (2014), Topographies of Mass Violence (2017), and Troubling Representation (2023).

François LeTourneux holds a PhD in Art History from the Department of Art History and Film Studies at the Université de Montréal, where he was a visiting professor from 2014 to 2016.

As Curator, International Art at Tate Modern, Valentine Umansky oversees the museum's time-based media programme and co-chairs its photography and European acquisition committees. She held positions at the International Center of Photography and Museum of Modern Art in New York, at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, and co-curated the 2025 Gjon Mili biennial in Kosovo, 2025 EMAP x Frieze Film in South Korea, and 2018 LagosPhoto Festival in Nigeria.

At Tate, recent exhibitions and projects include Ana Mendieta's retrospective (opening July 2026), and displays of works by Belkis Ayón; Dawoud Bey; Roy DeCarava; Nikita Gale; Cinthia Marcelle; Buhlebezwe Siwani; Dineo Seshee Bopape and Rosa Barba. Since 2022, Umansky sits on the selection committee of the Villa Medici Film Festival.

She also translated Roger Caillois's prose and poems into English (Stones & Other Texts, DittoDitto).

About the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MAC)

For more than 60 years, the MAC has brought together local and international artists, their works and a variety of audiences to celebrate art as an essential aspect of life in Montréal and Québec. The museum's head office, located in the heart of the Quartier des Spectacles, is currently undergoing a major architectural transformation. The MAC has temporarily relocated to Place Ville Marie, another iconic location in downtown Montréal. The MAC at Place Ville Marie offers various programs for the public as well as for school and community groups. Learn more at www.macm.org/en.

Download the press folder.

SOURCE Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal