McCord 2019: Summer Program

McCord's Museum 2019 Summer Programming

On July 9, 2019, McCord Museum has unveiled its summer programming which is filled with the outdoor activities that not only focus on the Montreal's history but also supports the community spirit of thee present-days Montreal, presenting varied participating events for both young and old.

Montreal at Work

A new outdoor exhibition on McGill College Avenue

Until October 14

This is McCord's 14th open-air exhibition on McGill College Avenue, presented by BMO Bank of Montreal in conjunction with Astral. It offers passer-bys to step into the Montreal's 1900 - 1940s workplaces. This outdoors exhibit consists entirely of the Museum's enlarged photographs from its own collection. From William Notman’s famous photography studio to nurses at Hôtel-Dieu hospital as well as the busy workrooms at the Berliner Gramophone Company, the images show the concentration of Montreal’s economic activity in the area now known as the Ville-Marie borough. In addition to bringing the workforce of yesteryear to life, the photos recall the old-fashioned charm of the architecture, furniture, tools and clothing of the time, and reveal how the workplaces have now radically changed. 

Historic Walking Tours

90-minute guided tours

Tuesdays and Saturdays at 10:30 a.m. and 2 p.m.

Until October 5

Returning this summer, these popular historic walks, accompanied by the Museum's guides, represent the way to discover three downtown iconic neighbourhoods:

Ville-Marie: Montreal’s Business District explores one of the city’s most vibrant and cosmopolitan areas, where churches stand alongside skyscrapers, shopping malls, cafés and major hotels, and nearly 500,000 people move through every day.

The Prestigious Golden Square Mile: Yesterday and Today covers the neighbourhood that has been synonymous with luxury since the 19th century: its lavish architecture, influential residents and businesses. The Museum’s MTL Urban Museum app provides additional information to round out your tour.

Saving an Iconic Neighbourhood: Milton Park, the surprising history behind the fascinating neighbourhood that is now home to many students. Nearly demolished in the 1970s, it was saved by citizen-led protests. It features a unique collection of buildings designed as large family homes in the 19th century. The route also takes you through McGill University campus, the focal point of the area.

Tour Reservations: here

MTL Urban Museum

Self-guided digital tours

Mobile app

The MTL Urban Museum tours on the McCord Museum app, offered in collaboration with Ivanhoé Cambridge, provide a unique opportunity to revisit the city’s history with historical walking tours using your smartphone.This year, there’s a new tour—McGill College: Where Change is Nothing New: revisit McGill College Avenue to relive its transformations through the years. From heritage buildings to modern high-rises, from Place Ville Marie to McGill University, this new outdoor tour retraces the history of this iconic avenue in Montreal through photographs, engravings and paintings from the Museum’s collection. There are four other tours, too: Shopping in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Ivanhoé Cambridge: Downtown and Old Montreal, The Golden Square Mile and The Art of Magic. You can download the app free of charge from the App Store.

Urban Forest

Until October 9

The Urban Forest has been reinvented again on Victoria Street, which has become a pedestrian mall for the occasion. Until October 9, this sunny seasonal park is open to anyone wishing to enjoy a picnic lunch and a rich array of activities developed around the Museum’s summer exhibitions, Sding K’awXangs—Haida: Supernatural Stories and The Polaroid Project: At the Intersection of Art and Technology. This year’s Urban Forest, designed once again by Paula Meijerink of WANTED Landscape, is yellow and white. All Urban Forest activities are free.

Here’s the program:

Morning Yoga

Tuesdays and Thursdays in July and August, 7:45–8:45 a.m.

The Art of Living Foundation and YogaTribes get your day started with yoga poses to facilitate concentration, relaxation, endurance and flexibility. Held at the Urban Forest, the morning yoga classes are open to all and give downtown passers-by a chance to start their day off gently. The activity is part of XP MTL’s programming.

Reservations: here

Unless otherwise indicated, yoga will be cancelled in case of rain.

Musique Nomade Concerts

Wednesdays in July and August, 12:30–1:30 p.m.

The Musique Nomade concerts invite you to discover the musical worlds of Indigenous artists from many different backgrounds. Nine artists and groups promise a varied program, from pop to folk, by way of country and electro: Sacred Wolf Singers, Laura Niquay, Angela Amarualik, Scott-Pien Picard, Backwater Township, Esther Pennell, VILDÁ, Anachnid amd Violent Ground. This musical programming is part of McCord’s International Year of Indigenous Languages offeringsm including the exhibitions Sding K’awXangs—Haida: Supernatural Stories and Hannah Claus’s there’s a reason for our connection.

Unless otherwise indicated, the concerts will be cancelled in case of rain.

Further information: here

Additional Activities

5@7 Pop-up

Wednesdays in July and August, 5–7 p.m.

Every Wednesday, the Museum and social innovation organization EXEKO offer get-togethers and discussions around the Museum’s photography collection.

Dance Performance—Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo

Wednesday, September 11, 12:30–1:30 p.m.

As part of the Festival Quartiers Danses, in the midst of the Urban Forest, discover the new creation of Mohawk dancer and choreographer Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo.

Public Pianos Play Jean-Pierre Ferland

Thursday, August 22, 12:30–1 p.m.

To mark the 85th birthday of Quebec master singer-songwriter Jean-Pierre Ferland, “Le petit roi” will be played on public pianos in Montreal and various other parts of Quebec.

Wapikoni Mobile’s Vélo Paradiso

Wednesday, August 28, 7:30–9 p.m.

Activate this projector bike to view an original selection of short films and video clips by Wapikoni Mobile and Musique nomade, selected by Indigenous guest curators. Marked by a desire to celebrate the diversity of contemporary Indigenous cultures and artistic expression, the screenings are followed by a discussion on the videos presented.

Outdoor screening. In case of inclement weather, the event will be postponed until Wednesday, September 4, at the same time.

Food Trucks

Wednesdays until October 9, noon–2 p.m.

At lunchtime every Wednesday, enjoy Musique Nomade concerts as a break from routine and have a bite to eat from a food truck.

Schedule subject to change, depending on the weather and food truck availability.

Click on images to enlarge them.

All photos courtesy @ McCord Museum

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

Stewart Museum 2019: Summer Program

Summer 2019 Programming

Stewart Museum, located on St. Helen’s Island, is housed in Montreal’s biggest historical military site. if you are interested in learning about the history of Canada, Quebec and Montreal, this is the place to visit this summer. In addition, the Museum also offers a superb view of the city, whether from the top of the glass tower or from the spacious inner courtyard.

Indoors, you can discover the exhibition History and Memory that is spread over two floors and displays close to 500 objects from the Museum’s collections that usher visitors through five centuries of Quebec history. The interactive model “Fortified Montreal” takes visitors back in time and breathes life into the city’s history. In addition, guided tours that reveal little-known facts are offered every day. 

Outdoor Tours 

Museum also runs two outdoor tours all summer long.

Tour of the St. Helen’s Island Fort

A great way to discover Montreal’s largest military history site.

Tuesdays to Sundays

At 1:30 p.m. in French

At 3:00 p.m. in English

The Tour of the St. Helen's Island Fort can be followed by

Historical tour From the British Arsenal to Expo 67

It highlights key events in the history of the island, from the building of the fort to the world’s fair, when Expo 67 was held in Montreal and the island was the focus of worldwide attention

At 2:00 p.m. in French

At 3:30 p.. in English

If you want the full experience, you can always do the two tours one after the other. Since places are limited, however, you’d be better to book your tickets online. The cost of the two outdoor walking tours is included in the price of admission to the Museum.

AN ESCAPE GAME 

If you love discovering new things, especially about history, the Stewart Museum offers two very popular highlights of its programming. Organized every second Saturday, the escape game Prisoners of Camp S/43 has you relive a little-known episode of Montreal’s history during the Second World War. An original adventure, for visitors age 9 and up.

Small extra fee on top of your Museum admission is required.

ILLUMINATED EVENINGS

Get away from the crowds and enjoy the view of the fireworks shows at La Ronde from the Museum's courtyard.The Museum will exceptionally stay open on Wednesday evenings from 5 to 10 p.m until July 24.

A special admission fee of $5 for visitors 13 and older (free for children

12 and under).

Click on images to enlarge them.

For more information, visit the Stewart Museum website. 

MAC 2019: Summer Exhibition

Rebecca Belmore, Nadia Myre, Chloë Lum & Yannick Desranleau, Ragnar Kjartansson & The National

The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC) has just opened its summer exhibition. This exhibition, which has not been originally previewed, is taking place because the museum's renovation project that had been scheduled to begin this summer was postponed. (You can read about MAC's transformation plans here.) MAC will continue to hold its activities throughout the summer and early fall in its current location, on Saint-Catherine Street, offering various programming to its visitors. 

Rebecca Belmore

June 20 -October 6, 2019

MAC presents an award-winning Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore. Her sculptures, videos, and photographs address some urgent issues of Native history and of our times. This exhibition was originally organized and presented last summer (2018) by the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), under the name Facing the Monumental.

Nadia Myre

June 20 to August 4, 2019

MAC also presents works of a Montreal Native artist Nadia Myre. Some of the pieces come from the MAC's permanent collection, others were newly acquired.

Nadia Myre deals with the topics of Indigenous identity, desire, loss, resilience and knowledge. Meditations on Red, 2013, is a series of photographs depicting a meticulous bead-work. Through this piece, Myre offers a critical reflection on identity as defined by blood and concepts such as “white man” and "red."

Chloë Lum & Yannick Desranleau

June 20 to August 4, 2019

Chloë Lum & Yannick Desranleau, are also included in the MAC's summer program. Their large installation is full of seemingly unrelated objects and vibrant colours. They move the objects around and wrap themselves into them during their performances.

Click on images to enlarge them.

Hover your mouse over images for description and credits.

In August, MAC Museum will once again partner with  MUTEK festival by presenting the world premiere of the ISM Hexadome installation, a collaboration between MUTEK and the Institute for Sound & Music in Berlin (ISM).

For more information about MAC, visit the museum's website.

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.

Click on images to enlarge them.

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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Hover over images for description and credits.

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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Hover over images for description and credits.

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.