Making art more accessible
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts recently partnered with 19 community organizations to distribute 250 art kits to families throughout the city, to help them discover the MMFA from home before visiting in person, and the initiative is just one of many that the museum has been focusing on for the past 20 years as part of its mission to make art more accessible.
“The whole focus of the art kits is to make art — and the art collection here at the museum — more accessible to a broader audience, so if it isn’t something you’ve been exposed to you can find out more about it before visiting,” says Mélanie Deveault, the MMFA’S director of education and wellness who oversees the museum’s cultural, educational community and art therapy programs aimed at fostering wellness, inclusion and togetherness through art.
“It’s a way of introducing the museum and families to each other, so they don’t feel like strangers and their first experience meeting isn’t so intimidating.”
The MMFA created the art kit with the support of the Foundation of Greater Montreal and partnered with organizations like Batshaw Youth and Family Centres, Mileend Community Mission, Moisson Montréal and Park-extension Youth Organization, among others, to distribute it to families throughout the city.
The kits, which include both instructions and materials for a variety of activities as well as a family pass to the museum, valid for one year, are an inviting way to learn more about the oldest art museum in Canada and seven artworks by Moridja Kitenge Banza, Shary Boyle, Aaron Curry, Annie Pootoogook, Christian Luycks, Tom Thomson and Front design studio, that are part of its collection.
“A lot of the museum’s initiatives during the pandemic have focused on the virtual world, but the art kit is about connecting with art supplies so you can have a more sensorial, tactile experience and a direct relationship to creation,” Deveault explains.
“Art breaks boundaries and builds bridges, and the museum is a place where you can connect and help make sense of the world. The younger you start visiting the museum and engaging with art, the more likely you are to return and develop a relationship with culture.”
Truer words were never spoken for double bass player Brandyn Lewis, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal’s only Black musician who recently founded Ensemble Obiora, along with his partner Allison Migeon, to promote musicians from different cultural backgrounds and increase their representation on the classical music scene as well as program works by composers of colour whose contributions have largely gone unacknowledged.
“Allison and I founded this ensemble to respond to the needs of our communities after having numerous discussions with BIPOC musicians who wanted to create a space where they could first of all unite, and become a community, but also play music by composers who were left out of music history,” says the double bass player who was introduced to music at a young age, via the drums, Gospel and his early education at Face School.
“We now have almost enough musicians to form a symphony orchestra.”
Ensemble Obiora, which played its first show that included works by Jeff Scott, Samuel Coleridgetaylor and Joseph Boulogne as well as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky on Aug. 28 at Centre Pierre-péladeau, is now focused on becoming a not-for-profit organization as well as developing an educational component, so it can share its mission of accessibility, inclusion and representation.
“A musician approached me after our inaugural concert and said ‘I’ve been waiting for this for 30 years,’” Lewis says.
“Because classical music isn’t very accessible for a lot of BIPOC students, it makes them feel illegitimate in a certain way when they become musicians, like classical music isn’t for them.”
Lewis and Migeon, who named their ensemble Obiora, which means a people’s heart or desire, after taking a DNA test and discovering they were both of Nigerian descent, organized two free outdoor shows in midseptember with the Conseil des arts de Montréal, in Lasalle and Little Burgundy.
Meanwhile, Lewis also returned to the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, which is currently in its 2021–22 season that launched on Sept. 14 under the head of its new music director, Rafael Payare.
Payare will be conducting two concerts in April for students from École Saint-étienne as part of Osmose, the OSM’S program that enables children with autism spectrum disorder to connect with music, as well as the Bal des enfants in addition to its regular season.
Finally, for residents of Laval, there’s the second edition of Zoom Art being held until Oct. 3.
The outdoor exhibit makes art accessible by displaying it in areas usually reserved for advertising, on city bus shelters. This year’s expo features 11 diverse artists including Manuel Mathieu, the Haitian-born, Montreal-based, multidisciplinary artist.
Laval is a land of welcome where immigrants represent 30 per cent of the population,” says Geneviève Goyer-ouimette, the project’s curator. “Zoom Art metaphorically moves passersby to an imaginary place, and the selection of artists from diverse background has only enriched that experience.”