MMFA 2019: Avant-garde Montrealers

Jewellery, Glass and Ceramics as Envisioned by Gallerists Jocelyne Gobeil, Elena Lee and Barbara Silverberg

April 30, 2019 - March 2020

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) dicates its Design Lab to three Quebec former gallery owners whose expertise ensured that glass, ceramics and jewellery became recognized fully as artistic disciplines. Avant-garde Montrealers: Jewellery, Glass and Ceramics as Envisioned by Jocelyne Gobeil, Elena Lee and Barbara Silverberg pays tribute to these women and their resolutely contemporary and practices.

Bringing together 60 of the works – which the Museum now boasts in its collection – Avant-garde Montrealers attests to the vast creative potential of jewellery, glass and ceramics.

The gifts of works from these galleries reveal the exemplary role played by Gobeil, Lee and Silverberg as true Canadian pioneers. The Louise and Laurette D’Amours bequest from the Liliane and David M. Stewart Collection and the Anna and Joe Mendel Collection respectively showcase Canadian glass art from 1970 to 2015, and Canadian and international glass art from 1962 to 2008. The gift of Barbara and Philip Silverberg highlights the oeuvre of American and Canadian ceramicists, especially of the 1980s and 1990s. The pieces from the personal collection of the late Jocelyne Gobeil were fashioned by artists who made their mark on the history of contemporary jewellery during the same period. The confluence and synergy of the works in this exhibition add to the depth and diversity of the Museum’s decorative arts and design collection, a unique holding in North America.

  

Jocelyne Gobeil, Elena Lee and Barbara Silverberg opened their galleries in a period when these changing fields were shifting focus from utilitarian and decorative objects to sculptural and conceptual works of art. These gallery owners fostered the dissemination and promotion of such creations by solo and group exhibition programming, by presenting them at artistic shows, promoting them in publications, as well as pursuit of other avenues. The women convinced the artistic milieu and a wider public of such works relevance and endurance.

Located near the Museum, their galleries took advantage of the high traffic on Sherbrooke Street and the close by presence of other art galleries. 

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Galerie Elena Lee (1976-2017) specialized in Canadian contemporary glass art. Representing new and established artists alike, the gallery showcased traditional blown-glass works as well as more complex and sculptural art that exploits the many facets of glass and its potential for combining with other materials – works that put Canadian glass art on the international stage.

Galerie Jocelyne Gobeil (1987-1999) sought to give jewellery its due credit as wearable works of art. Jocelyne Gobeil primarily represented Quebec artists but also featured American and European creations to raise the profile of international jewellery. Renowned creators expressed their reflections on jewellery with novel and experimental pieces made in a wide array of materials that effected undeniably powerful statements.

Galerie Barbara Silverberg Contemporary Ceramics (1985-1998) started out showcasing the conceptual approaches of Quebec artists and then expanded into works from the United States as well as other parts of Canada, including representatives of the Regina Clay movement. The versatility of this art form was exploited to the fullest by emerging artists and ceramicists celebrated across Canada and around the world. Materiality, plasticity, emotional expression, and creative inspirations together contributed to the great diversity of the artworks.

Exhibition Location

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Design Lab, Liliane and David M. Stewart Pavilion – Level 2

Until end of June 2019, this exhibition can be accessed via the 3410 Du Musée Avenue entrance only. Tickets must be purchased at the Lobby of the Jean-Noël Desmara

For more information about the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibitions and activities, visit the museum's website.

McCord Museum Reinvented

New Montreal Museum

April 30, 2019

McCord Museum, located in the heart of Montreal, announced major re-structuring and construction of new museum extensions on its present site. While preserving its Sherbrooke and Victoria Streets façades, it will expand upwards from the present historical McCord Museum building. It will also overflow into the adjacent Victoria Street that runs along the west side of the museum, as well as southwards into the lot that houses the former Caveau restaurant on President Kennedy Avenue. The combined area of these sites will enable the museum to meet its needs for additional space.

Working closely with the City of Montreal that granted the right to build on Victoria Street, the Museum selected the site after conducting a feasibility study. The new building will house under the same roof three recently merged museums: McCord Museum, Stewart Museum and Fashion Museum. Instead of the present 1%, this will allow to display 4-5% of items from the combined permanent collection consisting of 1.4 million artifacts. In addition, the Museum wishes to change its name. The preliminary name proposed is Montréalais.

The new museum will triple the space and will double the number of visitors per year from the current 300,000 to 600,000. It will also triple its educational space and will allow for a far greater number of school group visits, as presently McCord Museum is unable to satisfy all school trip requests.

The project is expected to cost $180 million. It is projected that 1/3 of the cost will be covered by the Federal Government, 1/3 by the Provincial Government, and the remaining 1/3 by private donations.

New museum to receive historic donation

The McCord Stewart Museum also announced that La Fondation Emmanuelle Gattuso had pledged to donate $15 million towards this project. It is the largest single private monetary donation to a Quebec museum in over 30 years. In 1987, the J.W. McConnell Foundation donated $50 million to the McCord Museum for its expansion and the creation of an endowment to preserve its collection.

Madam Emmanuelle Gattuso, Vice President, Public Affairs of Gattuso Inc. food company founded by her parents, stated:

"Although I have lived in Toronto for many years, I am still a Montrealer at heart. This donation is in memory of my parents, Lina and Pasquale Gattuso, Montrealers of Italian origin who chose this city to raise their family and start a food business that still bears their name and has thrived across the country since 1936. It is my hope that this new museum will break ground very soon and that my donation will encourage the various levels of government, Montrealers and ex-Montrealers to mobilize for this magnificent project that will enrich Montreal’s cultural life."

All pictures of the new museum in this article are only preliminary concepts. McCord Museum will be launching soon an architectural competition for the best new museum design.

McCord museum will be closed during the construction works. Visit the museum now to be able to compare it later to the all new museum.

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All photos by DMA, courtesy @ McCord Museum

For more information on current exhibitions, visit the McCord Museum website.

McCord 2019: Haida - Supernatural Stories

Sding K’awXangs—Haida: Supernatural Stories

A Look at Haida Culture

April 23 - October 27, 2019 

McCord Museum has launched a new exhibition featuring the Haida Indian art and crafts from the archipelago of Haida Gwaii on Canada’s northwest coast. It features more than 100 rare objects, most of which came from the McCord Museum’s rich Indigenous Cultures collection. It also includes works by contemporary artists. This is an immersive exhibition of Haida culture of yesterday and today that showcases the beauty and unique treasures of people that were almost wiped out in the late 19th century. 

In addition to objects that originally came from a private collection of an adopted Montrealer George Mercer Dawson and were later incorporated into the McCord Museum’s collection, the exhibition showcases works by contemporary Haida artists that were selected by the guest curator Kwiaahwah Jones.

The exhibition highlits various aspects of Haida culture such as a unique artistic expressive vocabulary in-bedded into individual objects by various artists, the meaning they put into their works, the mastery of their individual techniques, and the spiritual context and essence they incorporate into their pieces. This always parallels the supernatural stories that inhabit and animate their artifacts. Also, the spiritual meaning of coming together within their community and utilizing the artistic creations at such gatherings and potlatches is also brought into focus.

Kwiaahwah Jones, Haida guest curator of the exhibition, stated:

“Descended from supernatural beings that emerged from the ocean, our people have occupied Haida Gwaii since time immemorial, surviving many challenges over the millennia. Today, we continue to work hard to build up our culture and our art, to preserve our endangered language and to heal from intergenerational trauma, all the while protecting and respecting the natural and supernatural worlds. The survival of the Haida is a story to be told, retold and celebrated.”

The legacy of adopted Montrealer George Mercer Dawson

The objects in Sding K’awXangs—Haida: Supernatural Stories are a testament to the know-how of the Haida culture, from the late 18th century to today. Most of them were collected in 1878 by adopted Montrealer, geologist and early anthropologist George Mercer Dawson on one of his trips through Haida Gwaii. The eldest son of Sir John William Dawson, principal of McGill University from 1855 to 1893, George Mercer Dawson was the source of most of the Haida objects now in the McCord Museum’s Indigenous Cultures collection. When his work took him to Haida Gwaii, Dawson was struck with admiration for the Haida people and their culture, which sparked his lifelong desire to preserve it.

The McCord Museum

Custodian of the vast Indigenous Cultures collection

The McCord Museum’s Indigenous Cultures collection consists of over 16,500 archaeological and historic artefacts recounting nearly 12,000 years of history—eloquent examples of the material culture of the First Nations, Inuit and Métis, primarily from Canada. It explores the deep meaning of the artefacts not just as historical evidence, but as expressions of the development, evolution and constant revitalization of Indigenous cultures. The Indigenous Cultures collection is a key component of the McCord’s permanent collections.

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For more information, visit the McCord Museum website.

Blind Date

Centaur Theatre / 50th Season

BLIND DATE

Spontaneous Theatre Creation 

by Rebecca Northon

April 9 - 28, 2019

Starring Rebecca Northan, Emma Brager, David Benjamin Tomlinson and Lili Beaudoin as Scenographer.

Blind Date, a comedy, is the closing play of the Centaur Theatre's 50th anniversary season (2018-2019). This is also a celebratory year for the Spontaneous Theatre Creation, their 10th anniversary season. Founded and created by the master improviser Rebecca Northan, the Spontaneous Theatre Creation performances had earned an acclaim in the on-stage theater world for it energetic, unpredictable stage enactments, where each night a different blind date encounter takes place.

A blind date partner is chosen from the audience. The play is about 90 minutes long, without an intermission, and the professional actor has to actively engage the "blind date" volunteer to support and navigate his untrained onstage presence. The clumsy, awkward moments have to be blazed over with the principle actor's acting skills, assuring the professionalism of each performance. 

Rebecca Northan's stage presence as Mimi is powerful and impressive. She makes the audience laugh. She is also tremendously skilled in making her volunteer "blind date" to navigate through the invented onstage story-line even when venturing into areas of discomfort.

In addition to the Mimi's principal onstage personage, a male sole principle actor was also added. Rebecca Northan stated:  

“… an audience member asked, ‘Would you ever do a queer version?’ and it’s in our nature to say, ‘YES!’”

You can see David Benjamin Tomlinson playing an onstage character Mathieu on Thursday nights April 11, 18 and 25.

Blind Date was originally commissioned as a 10-minute piece for the Spiegelshow at Toronto’s Harbourfront as part of World Stage. The full-length production has been touring since 2009 across Canada and the US, selling out in Toronto, on Broadway and in London's West End.

ADDITIONAL ACTIVITIES

Sunday Chat-Up

April 14 at 12:30pm

Join Lucinda Chodan, the Montreal Gazette's Editor-in-Chief, in conversation with Shôvàne Brisindi, from Clowns Without Borders, who will talk about her latest visit to Haiti. For over 20 years, Clowns Without Borders has been organizing shows and workshops for people affected by war, misery, or exclusion. This is also a free public event with refreshments provided by Bonaparte Restaurant.

 
Post-Show Talkbacks

Thursday April 25 and Sunday April 28

Audience members are invited to stay after the performances for insightful Q&A’s with these masters of improvisation and spontaneous theatre.
 
Saturday Salon

April 27 following the 2pm matinée in Centaur’s main floor gallery. Eda’s guest will be Rebecca Northan, creator and performer of Blind Date, which celebrates its 10-year anniversary and 800^th performance while at Centaur Theatre!  

For more information, visit the Centaur Theatre website.

The Shoplifters

Centaur Theatre / 50th Season

THE SHOPLIFTERS

Written & directed by Morris Panych

March 19 - April 7, 2019

Morris Panych, who wrote and directed of The Shoplifters, is the two-time Governor General’s Award-winning Canadian playwright. The Shoplifters is a comedy about the effects of consumerism on people from the lower socially divided strata of our urban communities.

The play had a world premiere in 2014, in Washington, DC, a huge metropolitan area and a capital city of the world’s most powerful country that is dedicated to free enterprise and the power of the dollar. Ironically, the plays’ character Alma remarks, “You wanna talk about stealing? Who stole the American dream?”

Alma, a feisty geriatric shoplifter, spends her time helping to redistribute what she classifies as undeserved corporate profit to her less fortunate neighbours. Through her interaction with the play’s other three characters, it become apparent she is quite conscious how her steeling actually creates jobs not only for the security guards, but also all those who design and produce security equipment. Her comments lead the audience to ponder on the mechanics of the modern capitalist societies, and how nothing can really be qualified as terribly bad because in the long run all people’s disruptive, negative behaviours lead to stimulating industries to curb them, consequently creating innovations, jobs, more capital and more money.

Eda Holmes, Centaur Theatre’s Artistic and Executive Director, stated:

“Morris is one of Canada’s best contemporary humorists, looking at important, timely issues with the social consciousness of the guy on the street. With The Shoplifters, he questions right versus wrong within the larger corporate context. Grey areas abound but at its core, The Shoplifters is a love story of sorts: loving your community and putting it first. The wonderful eccentricities of these characters give us hope for humanity.” 

PRODUCTION TEAM

Actors: Ellen David, Marie-Ève Perron, Michel Perron, Laurent Pitre

Set & Costume Designer: Ken MacDonald

Lighting Designer: Alan Brodie  
Fight Director: Sylvio Archambault

Associate Lighting Designer: Eryn Griffith
Stage Manager: Elaine Normandeau
Assistant Stage Manager: Danielle Laurin  

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Post-Show Talkbacks:  Thursday March 28 and Sunday March 31. Audience members are invited to stay after the performances for insightful Q&A’s with members of the play's production team.

For more information, visit the Centaur Theatre website.

McCord Museum 2019: Hannah Claus

there’s a reason for our connection

Dialogue and Encounter

Artist-in-Residence Program Exibition

6th Edition

March 7 - August 11, 2019

For the 6^th year of its Artist-in-Residence program, the Montreal's McCord Museum presents an exhibition by a multidisciplinary visual artist Hannah Claus who has Mohawk and English ancestry. Claus draws inspiration both from the McCord’s Indigenous Cultures permanent collection and the Text Archives. Her work portrays the concepts of dialogue and encounter, which are a cornerstone of what she refers to as relationality, further identifying it as “a principle that is at the heart of Indigenous cultures ".

The works on display are all new artistic pieces created specifically for this exhibition. They are presented together with museum’s object that inspired them, thus conjuring up the invisible encounters and exchanges across historical eras that are part of our shared histories. This also bringing into focus several artefacts from McCord’s large collection.

There are works that focus on writing and communication, others evoke temporality through repetitive imagery and translucent media. Claus uses these concepts to evoke what is not necessarily visible at first glance, but what the visitor might perceive or even feel on viewing her works.

“Culture is alive. It’s fascinating to draw inspiration from objects and to bring them to life, to make them live and breathe a little,” she states.

She further states about her work:

 “I use installations to create sensory environments that speak to memory and transformation. My works explore the relationships between the specific, the personal and the real, which lie at the heart of an Indigenous cosmogony—often the world view of the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk), in particular—in order to question our perception of time, space and memory… What I want to do is create a dialogue between present and past.”  

About Hannah Claus

Hannah Claus, a visual artist of Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) and English ancestry, has been living and working in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal) since 2001. In her installations, she explores our connections with memory, space and time; she often works in collaboration with other artists, using processes of repetition and accumulation to express an Indigenous method and perspective. A graduate of the University of Ottawa (1992), the Ontario College of Art and Design (1998) and Concordia University (MVA, 2004), she has exhibited her works in numerous arts centres and public museums across Canada, as well as in Switzerland, Germany, Mexico, Chile and the United States. Hannah Claus is a member of the Tyendinaga Mohawk community of the Bay of Quinte in Ontario.

Hannah Claus

Hannah Claus

Artist-in-Residence program

The McCord Museum’s Artist-in-Residence program invites artists from Montreal and elsewhere to explore and interact with the museum’s collections, casting a critical and conceptual eye and relating them to their own artistic practices. Through the works they create, artists in residence revisit the social and historical facets of artefacts in the McCord’s collections and address how they help construct our identity as Montrealers and as a society.

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All images @ Nadia Slejskova

For more information, visit the McCord Museum website.