A CHANCE TO REVEL IN ART
On Sunday, access to city’s museums is free of charge
Montreal Museums Day, a fixture on the local calendar since 1987, is an idea that could scarcely be improved upon. Who, after all, would argue that the only thing better than going to a museum is going to a whole bunch of them for free? Forty-three participating museums means that every possible taste and interest is catered to this Sunday, but the real beauty of Museums Day is that it gives free rein to spontaneity and impulsiveness. Here, truly, is an opportunity to see things you might otherwise never see. Indulge yourself, then, but leave yourself open to discovering indulgences you never knew you had.
With that in mind, representatives from a cross-section of museums — and please remember, there are another 38 equally worthy ones — were asked to pick something within their walls on which the curious might want to take a flyer. The five featured below are all within reasonable walking distance of each other, but be aware that a helpful, colour-coded system of five free shuttle routes are being offered by the STM again this year. The buses run in a loop, departing from and returning to Promenade des artistes in the Quartier des spectacles (take Exit Jeanne Mance at métro Place des Arts).
Galerie de l’UQAM is presenting a show that occupies a zone where installation, industrial and environmental art meet. Mexican artist Gilberto Esparza has created something that looks like a fantasia out of a future-set movie but in fact has a practical application in today’s world. Plantas Auto fotos intéticas, says co-curator Véronique Leblanc, “gathers waste water from 12 points in the city to produce energy, which produces light that allows plants in the central nucleus to do photosynthesis and produce clean water.” The apparatus at the centre of the complicated process, looming in the near-dark like a huge robotic spider, achieves a strange beauty, and the project is enhanced by accompanying films shot in Mexico and Montreal. It may all sound potentially bewildering, but fear not, the gallery will have guides on hand.
400 Berri St., Pavilion Judith Jasmin.
Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal offers such a range of cutting-edge Quebec art that, even though the museum is between temporary exhibitions on Sunday, you could easily spend the whole day among the permanent collection.
Marie-Ève Beaupré, curator of the collection, recommends works by a pair of artists: “Hajra Waheed is an emerging artist based in Montreal who is quite well-known on the international scene. Her work — the Video Installation Project 1-10 — is a 30-minute video consisting of 10 short vignettes produced in places in the world where photographic and video documentation is prohibited. They’re like pages from a private diary where the spectacular and the banal collide. She was raised in Saudi Arabia, where the idea of censorship is very different from what we know here,” Beaupré says. “And people who saw the David Altmejd exhibition two years ago at the MAC will want to see Between Self and Other, with an amazing (sculpture of a) giant by Altmejd.”
185 Ste-Catherine St. W. (corner Jeanne-Mance St.)
McCord Museum is currently hosting the buzz-worthy shows Fashioning Expo 67 and Illusions: The Art of Magic. Both have been written about in the Montreal Gazette, and both are highly recommended. Suzanne Sauvage, president and CEO of the McCord, points out another current museum hit: Aislin: 50 Years of Cartoons. “It gives you, in 50 cartoons, the history of Canada, Quebec and Montreal, political and social. Humour is universal, and it’s very interesting to see how Aislin takes us from Trudeau to Trudeau at the federal level, and through all our mayors of the last 50 years — we see the evolution of our society.” Sauvage also wishes to spotlight an exhibit that, while permanent, shouldn’t be taken for granted. “The First Peoples Collection is, in my mind, outstanding, very moving. It’s almost a mystical experience — the story being told, the beauty of the objects.”
690 Sherbrooke St. W.
The period architecture and old-world vibe of Old Montreal makes for a pleasingly counterintuitive setting for the decidedly modern DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art and its large-scale avant-garde show Ed Atkins: Modern Piano Music. Title notwithstanding, it’s a work where music is only part of a dizzying and sometimes unsettling multimedia experience. “In a very short time he has made a huge impact on the art world,” said DHC/ART curator Cheryl Sim of the Berlin-based Atkins. “He makes non-linear video pieces working with many genres — cinema, music video, infomercial, a bombardment of every media that we know today, all to talk about sadness and loneliness but also the desire for connection with people.” Cast aside all preconceptions for this one, then — and parents, be aware that there is some nudity.
451 St-Jean St.
“What a great occasion to visit our five pavilions, including the new Peace Pavilion,” said Nathalie Bondil, director and chief curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Indeed, the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion for Peace — to give it its full title — officially opened only last November, so there will be many, even among museum regulars, who have yet to see it. Named for the local philanthropists (both of whom died in 2016), the pavilion is filled with roughly 800 works, among which the 77 masterpieces of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art donated from the Hornsteins’ private collection in 2012 are arguably the star attractions. The building is a worthy destination in itself, its natural-light-infused design doing a wonderful job of instilling all who come inside with a feeling of — yes — peace.