This text is part of the special booklet The summer of museums
Four museums to discover, or rediscover, for a successful holiday or a weekend getaway.
Between sports activities, gastronomy and outdoor shows, the visual arts should absolutely be part of any good rich and varied program when it comes to summer vacations in Quebec. Moreover, there are plenty of opportunities when you pass through some of the province’s regional capitals, including Sherbrooke, Joliette, Trois-Rivières and Rimouski. A brief overview to give you many reasons to pop into their museums, and thus take in the sights.
Tribute to the symbolic power of the islands
The Regional Museum of Rimouski benefits from a unique location in the heart of this town in Bas-du-Fleuve, a legacy of the building’s former vocation, a church dating from 1824 devoted to art and culture since 1972.
What does insularity mean for artists with a mixed identity sharing their existence and their childhood memories between the place of origin and the host land? And is this bond even stronger when you take your first steps on an island? These questions run through the exhibition Along the islands, archipelagos (until September 10), finely woven by curators Analays Alvarez Hernandez and Raquel Cruz Crespo, Montrealers by adoption from an island famous among all, that of Cuba.
They invited six artists (Cecilia Bracmort, Léuli Eshraghi, Patrick F. Henry, Kama La Mackerel, Yen-Chao Lin, Marigold Santos) whose life trajectory somewhat resembles theirs. They have Haitian, Caribbean, Australian, Taiwanese, French roots, and Montreal is one of their main anchor points. These multiple identities, bathed in fresh or salt water, subtly permeate their works, scratching the colonial past that has shaped the landscapes and destinies of all these islands.
When it’s POP in Trois-Rivières
A museum establishment that distills a real feeling of joy, brings back beautiful memories and is never afraid to go in the most surprising directions, the POP Museum of Trois-Rivières is pursuing its mission with complete consistency this summer.
If Fred Pellerin has long been adopted by all of Quebec, and even beyond our borders, he is nonetheless “a little guy from Mauricie”, and his imagination will be brought to light – literally – by glass artist François Fréchette. In the exhibition It’s Babine’s fault! (from June 16 to 1er October), the life of one of the most famous characters of the native storyteller of the mythical village of Saint-Élie-de-Caxton is revisited through a series of stained glass windows sometimes resembling a slide show, sometimes like a Stations of the Cross. Because poor Babine never had the easy part in the stories of Fred Pellerin, an angelic figure celebrated for his naivety as well as for his tenderness, a candor that those around him sometimes use as a weapon.
Another artist storyteller, this one deceased, will also take place in the museum. The famous cantor of Île d’Orléans, the only Félix Leclerc, sees part of his abundant imagination transformed in Allegro’s Bestiary (from June 8 to September 17), a perfect exhibition for young and old. Produced in collaboration with the Société d’histoire du patrimoine et d’histoire de la Côte-de-Beaupré and Île d’Orléans, this charming course draws from some of the most famous works of the great Félix (Adagio, allegro, Andante, Dialogues of men and beasts) to give a new form to the animals that inhabit them. This is a very pretty way of combining the love of nature with that of literature, particularly the love of the author of Barefoot in the dawn.
These are not the only highlights offered by this museum since visitors to the Biennale internationale d’estampes contemporaines de Trois-Rivières have every interest in including the exhibition Resonance VI (from June 17 to September 10) in their journey of discovery. Three artists (Suzie Allen, Anne Billy, Gabriel Mondor) were invited to freely draw inspiration from the works in their collections as part of this exhibition. This summer tradition of artistic dialogues dates back to 2014.
The pearl of Lanaudière
If only for the singularity of this place bathed in light and with clean lines, a visit to the Musée d’art de Joliette (MAJ) is a must during a stay in the region. The complex has undergone multiple transformations over the decades, and the latest works carried out in 2015 present a completely renewed architectural envelope.
In addition to appealing to our gaze, the exhibition Remove your earplugs invites us to lend an ear to better understand the approach of 22 artists from here and elsewhere, including Anna Holveck, Nik Forrest and Hanna Sybille Müller. Coming from all creative horizons, they have a very specific mission here: to let themselves be impregnated with three musical terms of the American composer Pauline Oliveros and extend them into different works of their own. Videos, sculptures, photographs, installations unfold to feed a reflection on the importance of listening and on its power of social transformation as well as individual.
Originally from Rimouski and based in Montreal, the multidisciplinary artist Anne-Marie Ouellet spends the summer in Joliette with the exhibition Cohesion. An investigation into the doing groupe. She brings together different works created throughout her 20-year career, the collective space serving as a common thread for this set of selected pieces. At the center of his past creations sits Cohesion, a performative installation that questions the way of being together and of fitting into groups linked by all kinds of experiences; mourning, care, solidarity in the face of adversity…
Always in a perspective of exchanges and listening, the artist and documentary filmmaker Iphigénie Marcoux-Fortier uses her camera to give voice to women of different origins, all established in the rural areas of Lanaudière. In a series of short films co-directed with the protagonists, Become with us presents itself as a mosaic of stories, confidences and confessions where strengths and vulnerabilities coexist.
These three exhibitions offered by the MAJ will be open to the public from June 11 until September 4.
Portraits and aspects of the Eastern Townships
Founded in 1982, installed in the former head office of a bank since 1996, the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke (MBAS) preciously preserves part of the artistic memory of the Eastern Townships. It also has the mission of revealing different facets of this magnificent corner of the country.
This is somewhat the objective at the base of What would we be?, by Adele Blais. This exhibition presents the colorful and abundant work of this painter and collagist from the region who here revisits some of the historical roots of the surroundings. It does so by celebrating the exceptional contribution of several women born in Estrie who later wanted to change the world or set out to conquer it. We are thus entitled to a gallery of portraits with flamboyant aesthetics, highlighting for example the courage of the activist and politician Thérèse Casgrain, the creativity of Eva Tanguay, queen of vaudeville at the beginning of the 20the century, and the visionary spirit of Anna Canfield, forgotten founder of the city of Sherbrooke. An original way to review certain parts of our history.
In collaboration with the Musée des métiers d’arts du Québec, the MBAS presents a retrospective highlighting the 45-year career of Paulette-Marie Sauvé. Artist-licière, she draws on both ancient techniques and more contemporary approaches to make tapestries that sometimes look like real pages of history in shimmering colors. Because if she knows how to highlight the built heritage of cities like Montreal (the Jacques-Cartier Bridge) and Toronto, she is also inspired by the bucolic charms of Montérégie, where this artist from North Bay, Ontario lives.
These two star MBAS exhibitions are already on view and will remain there until September 3rd.
This content was produced by the Special Publications team of the Duty, pertaining to marketing. The drafting of Duty did not take part.