Multiculturalism is a Montreal value

Yesterday we visited Pointe-à-Callière, Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History. There were three main exhibits that we saw: one about the history of St. Catherine Street, another about the history of the museum site in Old Montreal, and a third called Montreal Love Stories, that is an introduction to the many cultural communities and various heritages that make up present-day Montreal.

John:

This might be my favourite museum so far: it had maps, streetcars, hockey, ruins and dioramas. The exhibition on St. Catherine Street allowed the visitor to take in the entire history of Montreal, from 1760 to 2011. Focusing on one street and its development is a great way to get a lot of info into one exhibit. The series of maps that show the growth of the street also detail the growth of the city from when it was just the Old Port and farm land, to the heyday in the 19th century, to the decay after the Quiet Revolution (way to ruin it, ruiners), to a rebound today. There were three main subjects: entertainment, shopping and community. The entertainment portion featured photos from the first movie theatres, and of course Lili St-Cyr's famous reverse strip-tease. I love that Montreal had a DA who tried to "clean up" the town, as Pax Plante teamed up with Jean Drapeau in 1946 to tear down all the brothels, only to leave the women of the night on the street. Sex in Montreal is just an inevitability: why fight it? Another inevitability is shopping. The development of big department stores, and later specialty boutiques, defined St. Catherine and was part of what made Montreal the economic engine of Canada for a long time. Even as stores changed hands (check out how the Morgan's M recalls the B of its new owner, the Hudson's Bay company), the people kept coming. They got there on the streetcar, and then the metro. The metro was built under de Maisonneuve and Dorchester so as not to disturb the main shopping drag on St. Catherine. Now, the shopping malls sprawl under the street, spanning from the Green line to the Orange line.

It's amazing how quickly and easily we get to today as we walk along St. Catherine. I had to buy the book in order to really drink it all in. It's too cold now, but the exhibit made me want to walk the length of the street, from Westmount to the east end, and remember each section, each story. It's only 11km long, but it has about 250 years of history to it.

The basement of the museum houses its permanent collection, another view of Montreal's history, this time from the museum's site, which was formerly the Royal Insurance building, as well as an old Customs Office, and also the site of Montreal's first cemetery. The empty graves and shadow's projected on the stone walls was Platonically eerie. They list all the dead, Iroquois and European, and how they died. The official causes of death were: killed by Iroquois, accidental death or natural death. For the Iroquois, there's no indication of whether they were killed by Europeans. Ah, the old Quebecois arrogance is never far...

The Montreal Love Stories exhibit is strictly for tourists, I have to say. It's just an overview of Montreal's ethnic neighbourhoods, some videos of multi-cultural couples, and displays of "cultural" objects, like the 5 K's of Sikhism, or a set of bocce balls. Seriously. I suppose as a Torontonian and now a Montrealer, multiculturalism is not really museum worthy to me, it's just a way of life. It's just normal that different people can live together and get along. I don't see the big deal. Although when the Parti Quebecois' culture critic Louise Beaudoin says that "multiculturalism is not a Quebec value," I can see why it's important to put it out there.

Miriam:

Hier nous sommes allés au musée de la Pointe-à-Caillière, nommé d'après le premier gouverneur de la Nouvelle-France qui y avait établi résidence.

Le musée est très intéressant et la visite des ruines nous mets en contexte histoire de Montréal. L'exposition sur la rue Sainte-Catherine et charmante et bien remplie, tellement qu'elle serait bien mieux installée dans une salle beaucoup plus grande.

Ce qui m'amène à un sujet qui devrait être rappelé régulièrement aux visiteurs de musée en général et qui pourrait dans certain cas faire le saut à la vie de touts les jours.

1. S.V.P. gardez vos distances.

Le musée est une expérience que vous devez partager avec le public, si vous êtes à 30cm de l'affiche, peinture ou autre, vous empêcher toutes les autres personnes derrière vous d'apprécier l'expérience.

2. Pensez-y a deux fois avant de donner votre opinions.

Il est certain que pour plusieurs le musée ce partage avec leur accompagnateur et qu'une partie de l'échange ce passe à travère vos commentaires. Pensé aux autres qui n'ont pas pris le tour guidé des commentaires gratuits et déplacés. D'ailleurs vous courer le risque de vous faire rétorquer par quelqu'un qui a des commentaires plus tranchant que vous

3. Lisez dans votre tête

A moins que vous ne fassiez la visite avec un enfant qui ne sait pas lire je vous en prie lisez dans votre tête, car il n'y a rien de plus emmerdant que d'avoir un mec qui lit tout à sa blonde, de grâce laisse la lire pour elle-même!

4. Un peu de respect

Ne vous moquez pas du passé, dans un futur plus proche que vous pensez vos UGG et Canada Goose vont être aussi ridicule que les habits des amérindiens vous semblent maintenant.

Voilà quatre petites règles qui rendent l'expérience pour tous tellement plus intéressant.

Maintenant allez voir pour vous-même le musée de l'archéologie de Montréal. Ça vaut la peine.

Note: Someone else had the same idea as us. Here's what she thought about the Pointe-à-Callière museum. Different exhibits and different perspective.

Blue (Dabadee)

This week, we went to the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and saw two exhibits: Bleu and Actes de Présences.

John:

Ah, contemporary art. Whenever I go to see contemporary art, I usually have this conversation in my head: "I could do that." "Yes, but you didn't, did you?" "No, but that doesn't make it good art, that just means the person who had the idea to paint the entire canvas blue has a better agent than I do." Ok, maybe that's not exactly fair or true, but I can't help but roll my eyes at some stuff. Don't get me wrong: I like the colour blue! In fact, the two canvases, each painted two shades of solid blue by Claude Tousignant, were quite nice to look at. The darker blue was almost exactly the same shade of blue I chose to paint my living room in Fredericton. Yes, it's true, and though I was criticised for it at the paint store, once we got it on the walls, my decision was valourised.

At least I did learn something new: blue as the representative colour for water emerged only in the 1400s. Prior to that, water had been coloured green on maps. That was the only bit of information I gathered from the exhibit, as the decision to highlight the elements of the collection based on the colour blue seemed to have no other common thread than that. I'm surprised there was no Virgin Mary. There were, however, skies. Genius!

As I was underwhelmed (but not disappointed) by the Blue exhibit, I thought perhaps the Actes de Présences would be more inspiring. It was hit and miss.

First, the misses: The blue canvases were on the simple, minimalist side of things, and that's usually the side I'm on. I'm not a big fan of meta-art, or artist-centric, self-indulgent stuff. A series of photographs of the artist cutting herself with the thorns of a rose? Does it get more high school angst than that? I didn't even bother getting the name. I was also disappointed to read the info next to the Michael Snow piece, Venitian Blind 1970, which told us that the blurry self-portrait head-shots taken by hand with Venice as the background are supposed to remind us that "someone made this." Wow, thanks, I hadn't thought of that. I mean, I understand that perspective is something artists like to play with, and it can be interesting, but this was basically just a series of post-cards of Venice ruined by Snow's squinting mug. Next.

Ok, so there were some things I liked. Dennis Oppenheim's "Two-stage transfer drawing Dennis and Erik" 1971 was pretty cool. The artist, Dennis, had his son, Erik, draw a pattern on his back in magic marker. As Erik was drawing, Dennis tried to draw the same thing on the wall, based on what he was feeling on his back. Then they switched places. The result was not all that attractive or interesting in and of itself, but this is a cool trick of perspective. Not sure it's art, exactly, but it was cool.

The piece that I loved was Francis Alys 4:12 video called El Gringo, from 2003 (second video down in the link). The artist took a video camera into a Mexican village, and was confronted by the local gang of dogs. At first, you see the dogs approaching, from the perspective of the person holding the camera. Then, as the dogs get angrier and more aggressive with their barking, the artist seems to shove the camera in their faces a bit. There are some serious fang shots: cute little dogs become raging wild beasts! Eventually, with six or seven dogs at his heels (or throat!), he abandons the camera to the ground and runs away. We can hear the dogs barking and chasing him away. Then they come back to the camera (still running, left laying in the dirt), nose it, lick it. Back to being cute puppies again!

Well, you can watch the whole thing yourself, but I wanted to describe it, because it was really neat. To me, that's what makes good art: when you want to, no you have to, describe it to someone. The need to share the experience is the essential element for me, which is why some things that are maybe too private (self-cutting? really?) or too banal (measuring tapes stacked as a cone--I have done that one!) turn me off. I guess what I'm saying is, artists, if you want to impress me (and this should be your goal! Ha!), you'll need to come up with a story of some kind, a good colour (like blue!), and cute puppies.

Miriam:

A la demande générale je vais écrire mes pensées en français. Aujourd'hui nous sommes allés au Musée des arts contemporains de Montréal. Pour être entièrement honnête je ne suis pas une grande fanatique de l'art contemporain. Ce n'est pas tout à fait vrai, j'aime beaucoup certaines pièces, mais je n'aime pas les pièces accompagnées de longues descriptions abstraites qui asseyaient de me convaincre que la moitié de la patate trempez dans la gouache rose représente les amours perdus par la sur-urbanisation des terres fertiles durant le 20e siècle. Je trouve que lorsque l'art doit être expliqué c'est parce que l'artiste n'a pas fait son travail. L'exposition "Bleu" a su trouvé des pièces qui évoquaient chez-moi un sentiment de compréhension. En les regardant, j'ai cru être capable comprendre l'état d'âme de l'artiste, sans explication et d'une façon plutôt innée je crois. Ces pièces sont rare mais Bleu a su en regrouper plusieurs. Mais je dois donner une mention spéciale à la boutique du musée. Elle est remplie de curiosité et d'idée cadeau, mais aussi plusieurs créateurs locaux un groupe qui mérite d'être encouragé. Je n'ai rien à dire sur l'exposition "Acte de présence" allez-y un mercredi soir l'accès au musée est gratuit et dites-moi ce que vous en pensez.