Salon des métiers d’art de Montréal Montreal Annual Arts and Crafts Show December 11 - 20, 2015 This year, Salon des métiers d’art de Montréal (SMAM) is
celebrating its 60th anniversary. More than 420 professional exhibitors from many corners ofQuebec,
as well as other parts of Canada and even from France
are participating and showcasing their one-of-the-kind creations. This is a very much anticipated Quebec arts and crafts show which takes place annually at Place Bonaventure just before the winter holiday season and offers an excellent
opportunity for the visitors to acquire some unique holiday and
Christmas presents.
All works of art at Salon des métiers d’art de Montréal are recognized as "fine crafts" in accordance with the
norms and standards of Conseil des métiers d’art du Québec (CMAQ). This makes sure that every piece has
been designed and made by artisans in full mastership of their craft.
There is a number of works from the MANO a MANO project (photo just below and above on the right), Artisans sans frontière, in Bolivia. You can read about it here.
And there is also a number of excellent works by the students from the Le cégep du Vieux Montréal, a few examples of which you can see in the four photos below.
Old fashioned dresses made entirely out of paper make people stop and admire them.
There are also stone carvings with traditional Canadian motives, as well as vases made out of glass and wood.
And in view of the approaching Christmas and holiday season's home comfort, one will find at the show beautidul blown glass Christmas decorations and colourful warm light shades and lamps.
Click on images to enlarge them. The admission is free. For more information, visit the Salon des métiers d’art de Montréalwebsite.
On the right, just above, work by Kristine
Girard and Annie Pilote,Éclosion, mohair and other
animal fibres, cotton, paint, mineral pigments, and synthetic matter.
December
8, 2015 - April 17, 2016 Pointe-à-Callière, the Montréal Museum of Archaeology and History,is presenting an original exhibition focusing on Agatha Christie, an exceptional woman
whose unusual life and widely acknowledged and read novels left their mark on international
literature. The exhibition looks at Christie through her work, her imagination, and her world, including archaeology. It is one of the major international
events being held to mark the 125th anniversary of the famous novelist’s birth
on September 15, 1890.
A world exclusive produced by Pointe-à-Callière,
the Montréal exhibition features a total of some 320 items from such
world-renowned institutions as the British Museum in London, the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York, and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. It also
includes a number of Christie’s own belongings, still in her family’s
possession, graciously provided by Mathew Prichard, her grandson
and trustee of the Christie Archive Trust, and John Mallowan, the nephew of her second husband Max Mallowan. The National Trust, which manages Greenway House, one of Agatha’s
houses that today is a historic site, also co-operated with Pointe-à-Callière.
Few people are aware that the life and work of Agatha Christie, an imaginative and adventurous woman, were intimately bound up with
archaeology. It played an important part in her personal and professional life,
since she was married to Sir Max Edgar Lucien Mallowan, a famous archaeologist.
Between 1930 and 1960, she witnessed some major finds at ancient Mesopotamian
sites in what is now Syria
and Iraq,
the birthplace of writing, agriculture and other innovations.
Agatha Christie was no
passive spectator. In addition to underwriting some of her husband’s digs, she
cleaned, classified and documented the work with her own photos and films that the visitors
can see at the exhibition. Some of the artefacts handled by Agatha Christie, from dig
sites managed by her husband Max Mallowan or archaeological sites she herself visited in Egypt and the Middle East,
are on display.
The BritishMuseum loaned the PAC museum a number
of priceless archaeological items, some of them unearthed at digs led by her
husband, where she was also present. A relief representing a sacred tree and a
winged genie, engraved in the stone wall of the Assyrian palace at Nimrud,
ivories, a headdress and necklaces of gold and lapis lazuli, along with other
treasures from Ur, and a calcite vase, an alabaster statue, stone “eye idol”
figurines and tablets with cuneiform characters, are all on loan from the
prestigious British institution.
The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, for its part, loaned PAC museum a relief of Nefertiti and Akhnaton, a bust of
Akhnaton and several cuneiform tablets, while the RoyalOntarioMuseum provided ivories,
a relief representing Assyrian archers, and numerous cylinder scrolls, vases
and cuneiform tablets.
Agatha Christie drew heavily on archaeology and history
as inspiration for many of her famous novels, including Murder in Mesopotamia,They
Came to Baghdad,Appointment
with DeathandDeath Comes as the End. She
also described daily life on dig sites in a memoir playfully entitled Come,Tell Me How You Live. In fact,
she said that an archaeologist and a detective have much in common: both must
come to understand an event (recent or in the distant past) using their
observation skills and clues that are brought to light, piecing them together
and relying on a bit of luck, too! Investigating Agatha Christie is an
intriguing journey to a time when many of the treasures of mankind’s heritage
were discovered. It is also an encounter with a passionate woman, a brilliant
individual who invented a new literary genre, the historical whodunit.
Click on images to enlarge them.
Hover your mouse over images for description and credits.
Except for the very top and the very bottom images, all other photos in this article are courtesy of the PAC museum.
Read my previous article about this exhibition here.
Visit the PAC Museum website for the upcomingAgatha Christie exhibition activities information. Video Preview: Investigating Agatha Christie - Sur les traces d'Agatha Christie
