McCord: The Polaroid Project

THE POLAROID PROJECT

AT THE INTERSECTION OF ART AND TECHNOLOGY

A CANADIAN EXCLUSIVE AT THE McCORD MUSEUM

June 13 - September 15, 2019

McCord Museum is hosting the Canadian exclusive premiere of The Polaroid Project: At the Intersection of Art and Technology. This international exhibition is organized by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, New York / Lausanne, in collaboration with the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the WestLicht Museum for Photography in Vienna. It is presented by La Presse +.

The exhibition features original works of some 100 of the celebrated international artists of the 20th century, including Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Hockney, Chuck Close and Charles Eames, along with acclaimed Montreal artists like Evergon. The exhibition covers a wide variety of formats, ranging from the standard Polaroid (10.7 cm by 8.8 cm) to some very large sizes, including one assembly measuring 1.44 m by 2.99 m.

Polaroid had strongly impacted the Montreal’s photographic scene. This slice of the city’s history is illustrated by works of Montreal's three acclaimed artists known for their experimenting with Polaroid: Louise Abbott, Benoît Aquin and Charles Gagnon.

The exhibition also presents the  development of various Polaroid cameras and accessories. It highlights the vision of their inventor, Edwin Land (1909–1991), and the Polaroid camera development process that inspired creators around the world. Land's main focus was to bring the photo camera to every person. It was his purpose that people collectively exercise their creativity and artistry in capturing their reality, the images of their friends, family, and surroundings. The idea of being able to capture and freeze a moment of existence and hold onto it, to embody it with a sense of purpose, permanency and even eternity, is strongly present at this exhibition.

In keeping with its role as Montreal’s museum of social history, the McCord Museum has been encouraging Montrealers since April 2019 to contribute to the “Polaroid Project” by donating their photos to an ongoing and constantly evolving photographic installation piece that you will discover in the last exhibition room.

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All photos by Marilyn Aitken, courtesy @ McCord Museum

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

CCA 2019: Gordon Matta-Clark

Gordon Matta-Clark
Out of the Box

June 7 - September 8, 2019

The Montreal's Canadian Center for Architecture is dedicating its 2019–2020 Out of the Box exhibition series to the works of a trained architect and conceptual artist Gordon Matta-Clark. The items on display were all donated to the CCA by the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark in 2011.The donation consisted of Matta-Clarke's archives: his professional works such as writings, photographs, films, correspondence, and select artworks that were produced between 1969 and 1978.

Though Matta-Clark had a rather short life (he died at age 35, 1943-1978), he is best remembered for his monumental deconstructive pieces, the bold artistic statements created inside and out of the condemned masonry soon to be demolish. In one such case, the area was zoned for the future iconic building of the Paris' Pompidue Center.

This exhibition is the first part of the study of the CCA Matta-Clark archives, that will be presented to the public in three acts. To explore Gordon Matta-Clark’s critical practice within the architectural scene of the time, the CCA has invited for this series of exhibitions three guest curators from different curatorial backgrounds ranging from contemporary art, film and archival research, to social practice studies.

This first series is curated by Yann Chateigné. It reflects on Gordon Matta-Clark’s material thinking as deducted from his highly diverse personal library. It classifies the books into four main categories of his reading interest: Alchemy, Gravity, Networks, and Inner Spaces. 

The exhibition reveals lesser-known references in Matte-Clark's work that artist expressed during the decade of his artistic practice.

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Additionally, the Gordon Matta-Clark Collection can be studied online. Visit the online finding aid for personal reference.

To find more about this exhibition and other projects exhibitions, visit the CCA website.

MMFA 2019: OMAR BA

OMAR BA: SAME DREAM

The artist’s first solo exhibition in Canada

May 30 – November 10, 2019

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), in collaboration with the Toronto’s Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, is presenting the first Canadian solo exhibition by Omar Ba. This is the first joint project by those two cultural institutions. It showcases a selection of Ba’s major works from different periods in his career. In addition, the artist has created a large-scale mural for the Montreal public, on a makeshift wall, directly inside the gallery. At the end of the show, this work will have to be dismantled: because of its monumental size it could not be removed through the existing doors.

Omar Ba’s paintings are statement on political, economic, and cultural realities that exist in our world. His work deals with some urgent issues of our time: the global inequality of wealth and power, immigration crises, and our changing relationship to the natural world. He does it through depicting personal narratives alongside collective thus revealing the multidimentional character of his work. He would like the public to realize this about his exhibition: 

“I’d like people to see that we need to give African artists their rightful place, and I also hope they come away with a more positive image of humankind. That we realize that beyond conflict, religion and culture, we are all one. That there are no blacks, yellows or whites – only humans. I also want to convey the idea of an Africa that’s reasserting its place: of countries free of conflict and dictators that people are no longer forced to leave in order to have a good life. In fact, it’s my dream that the continent share its riches with every other country in the world in a mutual respect between African and Western leaders.”

In his work, Omar Ba synthesizes the visual context and texture of his two homes – Dakar, Senegal and Geneva, Switzerland. He combines historical and contemporary African and European motives, imagery, and many different textural element. He also uses his bare hands along with a range of techniques and tools to create his art. Most of the works are painted on corrugated cardboard. He prepares his surfaces – be they cardboard, canvas, or wood – with a black ground, upon which he layers vivid colours and complex compositions full of details. His figures merge with lush flora, fauna and biomorphic forms inspired by the Senegal coast where he grew up. Micro-worlds exist in his paintings within larger environments that evoke a shared habitat between humans, plants and animals.

About the Artist

Omar Ba (born 1977, Dakar, Senegal) lives and works between Dakar and Geneva. His work has been shown at BOZAR, Brussels, Belgium (2017); Ferme-Asile, Sion, Switzerland (2015); Hales Gallery, London, UK (2017, 2014); Biennale de Dakar, Senegal (2014); Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland (2012) among others. Ba’s works can be found in private and public collections, including Credit Suisse, Switzerland; Fonds municipal d’art contemporain de la Ville de Genève, Switzerland; Fonds municipal d’art contemporain de la Ville de Paris; Centre national des arts plastiques, France; and the Barbier-Mueller Collection, Geneva, as well as the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. In 2011, Ba received the Swiss Art Award.

Catalogue

Published in English and French by the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, under the editorship of Gaëtane Verna, the 150-page catalogue is a complement to the exhibition. On sale at the Museum Boutique and Bookstore.

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Exhibition Location

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Contemporary Art Square, Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion – Level S2

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

CCA 2019: Our Happy Life

Photo by Stefano Graziani, ”Rankings of Happiness 2015–2017”

World Happiness Report 2018. © CCA

Architecture and Well-Being
in the Age of Emotional Capitalism

8 May - 13 October, 2019

Can architecture contribute to general human happiness? Do sleek building designs combined with the equally sleek interior designs and landscaping alter a person’s mood from negative to positive? Does the comfort of plush carpets and bright lights have the power to alter your mood and make you happy?

Can the sense of grounding, freedom, peace, and even unconditional love one feels when being in nature be labelled as a hedonistic pleasure, as if it were something unnatural, superfluous, not really a basic human need to be connected to the source of all that is alive on Earth?

Can an architect or an urban designer create a sense of pleasure and deep satisfaction that has a power to border on a spiritual experience purely by artificial, artistic, and commercially strategic means?

To what an extend a human being becomes a commodity to be studied intensely with surveys and computer algorithms in order to determine how to structure the living environments in such a controlled way as to provide an illusion of a well being while constructing a sustainable, commercially profitable venue?

This new Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA) exhibition is offering its visitors to ask just these types of questions and seek personal answers.

Curator: Francesco Garutti
Curatorial team: Irene Chin, Jacqueline Meyer
Visual identity and design: OK-RM, London 
Exhibition design: Bernard Dubois, Brussels 
Design development: Sébastien Larivière, Anh Truong

To find more about this exhibition and other projects exhibitions, visit the CCA website.

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.