Peter Goldberg, owner and CEO of the Bouclair furniture and home-decor lifestyle brand.
Few areas of Montreal have been redeveloped in recent times quite as dramatically and rapidly as Griffintown.
Located southwest of the city’s downtown core, the historic neighbourhood has changed a lot over the last decade. What was once a sparsely populated enclave has been transformed by a pronounced skyline, waves of new residents and a crop of chic restaurants, cafés and shops.
One of those shops belongs to Bouclair, a historic Montreal brand that has also undergone a sea change.
The makeover has largely been orchestrated by Peter Goldberg, Bouclair’s owner and CEO. After the Montrealer and father of five purchased the company in 2003, he pivoted Bouclair from a chain of fabric stores to a furniture and home-decor lifestyle brand with a robust online presence.
Brick-and-mortar stores are still a big part of Bouclair’s business, however, and the Griffintown outpost is a special one — with a notable Concordia connection to boot.
“Rather than just open up another store where we display and sell products — which is fine, that’s what we do, after all — we wanted to try a different approach,” says Goldberg. “What became vitally important to us was to find a way to build connections with our community. And a wonderful way to do that is through art — and through support of local artists in particular.”
Established with a gift of $54,000, the Bouclair Residency in Digital Arts will facilitate the creativity of recent Concordia fine-arts graduates through a generous honorarium and professional experience and exposure. Quite literally, too, as the exposure will take place on massive exterior screens at Galerie B, a space at Bouclair’s Griffintown store that showcases emerging artists, many of whom were nurtured at Concordia.
The inaugural Bouclair residents had works on display at the rich multimedia environment through the months of February, March and April 2023. They included: Tamar Zehava Tabori, BFA 20, a contemporary dance artist and experimental filmmaker; Alfred Muszynski, BFA 21, whose work combines painting, performance and digital media; and Sarah-Mecca Abdourahman, BFA 20, a painter and video artist.
The initiative is a collaboration between Bouclair and Concordia’s Art Volt — a donor-funded platform that helps alumni embark on artistic careers. Art enthusiast Goldberg describes it as a way to distinguish his company’s concept store and foster local talent at the same time.
“Montreal’s artistic scene is widely admired, and deservedly so,” he says. “But our artists often struggle to be seen. I’m proud of the fact that we can help remedy that with this residency partnership with Concordia.”
“What became vitally important to us was to find a way to build connections with our community.”