Stewart Collection

Since 2000, Montreal’s Stewart Program for Modern Design has used its collection of international design to educate the public about design and its importance in everyday life. Now, with the completion of its final project, the Designed by Women website, and the gift of its extensive design collection to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and The Henry Ford Museum, the Stewart Program has achieved its mission. Although it will no longer continue in operation, the legacy of its collection will continue for the public to learn from and enjoy. Selections from the Stewart Collection will be on permanent display in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Stewart Pavilion, which is currently under renovation and will open in Fall, 2025.

The origins of the Stewart Collection date back to 1979, when philanthropists Liliane and David M. Stewart founded the Montreal Museum of Decorative Arts. Based on recommendations from their curatorial team, the Stewarts began collecting midcentury modern design. It was a pioneering focus at the time, when museums had little interest in the topic. In 1991, the curatorial team organized the landmark exhibition, Design 1935-1965: What Modern Was, which presented the work of leading international modernists. The accompanying publication, which was the first significant exploration of a period that was only beginning to gain attention, is still an important reference for curators and collectors. 

After the death of her husband, David Stewart, Liliane Stewart continued to actively build the Stewart Collection, ultimately creating one of the most important modern design collections in North America. The focus of the collection expanded over time to encompass modern design from the early twentieth century up through the present day, thus ensuring that the collecting viewpoint was always contemporary. This broader collecting mandate was reflected in acquisitions made for the 1997 exhibition, Designed for Delight: Alternative Aspects of Twentieth-Century Design, which presented the work of important modernist designers who disregarded the established principles of functionalism, simplicity, lack of ornament, instead creating surprising, witty designs that emphasized art over function. Important examples from the entire century were acquired for this exhibition. 

In 2000, Liliane Stewart donated the entire Stewart Collection – over 5,000 objects – to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) to ensure the future care of the collection and its accessibility to the public. That same year, she initiated the Stewart Program for Modern Design, which has continued to acquire important works for use in its design exhibitions. These objects have been continuously donated to the MMFA to enhance their Stewart Collection. Nearly 1,500 additional objects have been donated since the initial gift of the Stewart Collection.

In 2005, the Stewart Program collaborated with the MMFA to develop American Streamlined Design: The World of Tomorrow, an exhibition that explored aerodynamic styling from the 1930s through the present. Important industrial designs were acquired for this project. 

Following Liliane Stewart’s death in 2014, the educational mission and exhibition programs of the Stewart Program continued, as was her wish. The 2016 exhibition, Partners in Design: Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and Philip Johnson, which recounted the collaboration of two MoMA visionaries in the 1920s and 30s, placed their work and achievements within the larger context of New York’s modern avant-garde. This project, which was accompanied by a website, partnersindesign.org, inspired the acquisition of many objects that exemplified the tenets of “Good Design” as defined by the Museum of Modern Art in their 1950 exhibition of the same name.

In 2018, the Stewart Program embarked on its final educational project. The curatorial team was concerned that the Stewart Collection contained a disproportionate number of works by white male designers. To remedy this lack of diversity, important designs by women from across the globe were acquired for Designed by Women, the Stewart Program’s final project. The website, designedbywomen.org, acknowledges that the world of industrial design has historically been male and uses the Stewart Collection to educate the public about the significant, yet often overlooked, role of women designers. Along with the extensive website, which contains a biography for each designer along with an entry for each object, an exhibition was also organized in collaboration with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. 

One of the educational goals of Designed by Women was to create awareness of, and hopefully help to remedy, the fact that recognition, advancement, and compensation for women in the arts continues to lag that of men, and women of color work hardest of all in their struggle for acceptance and recognition. Exploring their work within the larger context of international design and the associated cultural and political issues has helped the Stewart Program to achieve its mission of using the collection to educate the public about design.