Worried about the visibility of our culture and the fate of our language, we tend to forget to take an interest in the places that welcome and embody them. Few of us know that the fire at the heritage complex of the Bon-Pasteur monastery has severely affected the activities of Héritage Montréal, to the point of forcing a major fundraising campaign. Worse, barely a few articles will have marked the release of the renovation and expansion project of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC). Two years, however, that the institution has taken refuge in a makeshift thimble placed in the hollow of Place Ville Marie.
It must be said that the latest version of the project, made possible by enhanced public aid from Quebec and Ottawa, which pay 90% of the bill, in no way erases the mismanagement into which the MAC sank. Almost ten years since the first announcement fell. Anticipated cost in 2014: 44 million. In 2018, we were at 51 million, in 2022, at 85 million. This time, the counter stopped at just over 116 million.
Admittedly, the exhibition spaces will double in size, those devoted to education will be improved. We promise brighter spaces and transparency. It won’t be a luxury for this museum marred by its blind wall and unrewarding lines. But the redevelopment will force it to find somewhere else to store its permanent collection. That’s if the call for tenders passes the test of reality, while the inflationary spiral awaits.
Even if the MAC 2.0 would finally reopen in 2027, as the most optimistic scenarios would have it, this hypothetical success would still show the contours of a failure. Traveled hand in hand with a Quebec Infrastructure Society that we would like to be more structuring, this way of the cross is not acceptable. Because of the avoidable swelling of public funds, but also for artists and more broadly for all Quebecers deprived of this precious showcase in the meantime.
The MAC is not alone in stalling as its budgets soar. The cost of the work of the theater of the New World rose from 20 to 31.5 million. The McCord Stewart Museum is back at its drawing board while the reconstruction of the Vieille Forge theater in Petite-Vallée is paralyzed. The former Saint-Sulpice library has found a promising project in the Maison de la chanson, but not without going through a painful saga that we would have done without.
Optimistic, the Minister of Culture, Mathieu Lacombe, argues that his ministry has found solutions for each of the projects in danger that have been submitted to him since his arrival at his head. But these piecemeal arrangements will not be without consequence on the already outrageously negligible cultural portfolio. Every time the department finds a way to stretch the rubber band a little more, its room for maneuver shrinks. And it is the rest of the cultural milieu that suffers.
The equation also includes facilities whose appetites are accelerating according to the Annual Management Plans for Public Infrastructure Investments 2023-2024. In one year, the asset maintenance deficit for cultural infrastructures went from $108.4 million to $261.7 million. As of December 31, 54% of the buildings and 49% of the specialized equipment under the Department’s care were deemed to be in poor or very poor condition. Not to mention the Blue Spaces, an ambitious caquist legacy weighed down by delays, cost overruns and growing opacity.
All of this leaves only crumbs for cultural institutions that are not directly under the control of the state, but whose projects nevertheless largely depend on public funds. Quebec is lagging far behind in terms of patronage. At 10% private investment, as is the case for the MAC, we live beyond our means. Private giving — as much from the megafortunes as from businesses and ordinary citizens — can and must imperatively take a better place.
AT The Press, who recently looked at our cultural infrastructures, expert professor André Courchesne reminded us of a principle that we too often lose sight of in Quebec: there is no point in building or expanding a building that will end up bankruptcy of the organization being helped. It is to be hoped that this dose of realism is not soluble in the minister’s optimism. Because the public will not be able to absorb everything. There are already painful trade-offs to be made, and there will be many more.
Cultural institutions have a duty to review their funding reflexes. It’s not about dreaming less or dreaming smaller, but about opening up to other models. Cities can also be more inventive in the way they support the institutions that make their heart beat. Finally, it is high time for Quebecers, local communities and businesses to come together en masse to push for action. Supporting our museums, our theaters and other key places is also a way of affirming loud and clear our cultural specificity.