The Museum’s team is saddened to learn of the passing of two of its former curators this year, Stanley G. Triggs, curator of the Photography collection from 1965 to 1993, and Jacqueline Beaudoin-Ross, curator of the Costume and Textiles collection from 1978 to 1998.  

Stanley Triggs’s contribution to the history of photography in Canada cannot be overstated. A specialist of photographers William Notman and Alexander Henderson, he spent almost thirty years building, researching and disseminating the collection then known as the Notman Photographic Archives. His publications, which count among the first scholarly studies on photography in Canada, include the books Portrait of a Period: A Collection of Notman Photographs (1967); William Notman: The Stamp of a Studio (1985); and The World of William Notman: The Nineteenth Century Through a Master Lens (1993).

During his tenure as curator, Stanley Triggs also consistently lent his support to contemporary photographers, many of whom exhibited their work at the Museum. A photographer himself, he was passionate about documenting the changing urban landscape of Montreal. Stanley Triggs was widely appreciated among Montreal’s photographic community. He will be remembered for his dedication, rigour, wit and willingness to break with convention.

Jackie Beaudoin-Ross held a key position at the Museum for two full decades, becoming the second curator of the Dress, Fashion and Textiles collection in 1978, after earning her MA in Art History at McGill University when she was in her forties. She contributed significantly to building the largest collection of Canadian dress and fashion, and shepherded it through its two moves – out of the Sherbrooke Street building and back in again – from 1989 to 1992.

Her tour de force was the inaugural exhibition in the new Museum’s costume gallery, Form and Fashion, accompanied by a catalogue with the same title. She wrote numerous journal and encyclopedia articles that stand as seminal reference works on rural Quebec dress in the nineteenth century and was known for her expertise on quilts and on the Montreal designer Marie-Paule. Jackie Beaudoin-Ross was very active in professional associations and was widely known and respected by international colleagues in her field.