Donning white gloves, Marie-Blanche Fourcade disappears down a narrow aisle of floor-to-ceiling shelves in the vault-like room of a special facility where the Montreal Holocaust Museum stores many of the 15,000 objects and documents in its collection.

She emerges moments later with a drawing by Ceija Stojka, a Roma artist who survived Auschwitz as a child, entitled What remains? Nothing.

In slashes of inky black, the piece depicts the remnants of a caravan, charred trees, a jumble of pails, and birds that appear like harbingers of doom. It provides a rare recounting of the Holocaust from the Roma perspective.

“Her work is usually very colourful, especially when she treats life before. But this is very, very dark,” explains Fourcade, head of conservation and exhibitions at the Montreal Holocaust Museum. “She’s speaking to the violence through her painting. She succeeds in transmitting the power of her testimony through her works. … It’s really hard to portray a subject like this, so it’s really exceptional to have a Ceija Stojka work in the collection.”

Like most of the art the museum possesses, Stojka’s drawing is not usually on display at an institution dedicated to commemorating one of the darkest chapters in history.

But that will soon change when the museum opens the doors of its brand new home on St-Laurent Blvd. next year. 

In fact, the move from Côte-des-Neiges to the heart of Montreal and the construction of a new building on the Main are prompting a complete overhaul of the museum’s permanent exhibition. 

To help undertake this transformation, the museum brought in a renowned architectural historian and Holocaust scholar on contract as a co-curator to work alongside Fourcade.

“After an exhibit that lasted 23 years, we have the opportunity to rethink what we’re doing,” Fourcade said. “We have this very exciting moment where we need to come up with an exhibit that’s going to last for the next 15 years. It’s not just thinking of what we’re doing today, not just looking at your feet. You have to look ahead and say ‘What should we do?’”

Actually, Robert Jan van Pelt, a professor at the University of Waterloo, was first conscripted by KPMB Architects, one of the firms that ended up winning the contest to design the new museum. 

He ensured that a curatorial perspective was part of the conceptualization process from the outset and insisted that the Holocaust not be represented in the design of the building itself. Instead, he wanted to bring glimpses of the street outside into the new museum. 

After an exhibit that lasted 23 years, we have the opportunity to rethink what we’re doing.

After an exhibit that lasted 23 years, we have the opportunity to rethink what we’re doing.

“The Holocaust is basically about a society that destroys itself and for me it’s very important that we show in the building … a city that works,” van Pelt explained. “Every time you move then from one section to the next section of the exhibition, you can look out into the street. You can see life as it unfolds in the here and now, which is a response to the horrors of the Holocaust.”

He said the building from the street should be quite........

© Montreal Gazette