Quebec museum to expand

Quebec City is planning a $90-million expansion to the Musee National des Beaux-Arts. The museum has been donated a site for the addition to the existing building on the Plains of Abraham. The donated site was formerly occupied by a Dominican Monastery. <br>
Current plans call for the demolition of the old monastery, and for an international design competition to build an 8,000-square metre addition.<br>
About one quarter of the $90-million budget still has to be raised from private donors, but the goal is for the new museum to open in 2011.<br>
In a CBC radio interview, John Porter, the director general of the museum, said the building program was “Perhaps the biggest cultural project in Quebec since the construction of the Grand Theatre in the 1960s.”<br>