L'œil – Sherbrooke Street West, Montréal, Québec

The Erskine and American United Church was a Protestant church housed in a Romanesque Revival building constructed in 1893-94. The windows are of Tiffany stained glass.In 1998 the building was designated a National Historic Site of Canada. In 2007, the building was acquired by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, which converted it into the Claire and Marc Bourgie Pavilion, a space devoted to Canadian art, as well as a venue for concerts.

In front of the building you will find a bronze sculpture by Montreal sculptor David Altmejd (born 1974). The work is entitled "L’œil" (the Eye) and represents the transition between the inside and the outside of the museum. In general, Altmejd creates highly detailed large-scale sculptures that often blur the distinction between interior and exterior, surface and structure, representation and abstraction and which often blur the distinction between various types of body shapes. In this case, he has created a bird-man. In his words, the museum is a space that represents in miniature the universe itself – just as the human head does.