Owned by Loto-Québec, the Musée d’art d’expo 67, which then became the Musée d’art contemporain (MAC) until 1992, has no chance of winning the jackpot. The company actually wants to get rid of it and those who believed that the government would intervene to save this heritage building had clearly not heard the worrying comments made by the Minister of Culture in front of the fire at the Monastery of the Good Shepherd. On October 31, the minister refused a request for classification of the former Museum building following Decree 1503-2023 of October 4, which authorized Loto-Québec to sell it for an amount exceeding $10M.
Loto-Québec has developed 22 sustainable development criteria, but the preservation of beauty, glory, and History does not seem to be one of them. However, from the Expo 67 Master Plan, the Museum was intended to be long-lasting and was built in reinforced concrete in the brutalist style. But the fate that the company has in store for it now is its sale to a real estate developer with a view to its destruction and the construction of a luxurious condo tower with a view of the river. All to the applause of the City of Montreal, which insinuates that the maneuver will help resolve the housing crisis. The saving in extremis by the Société du parc Jean-Drapeau is therefore highly improbable.
The physical disappearance of the Museum is only the latest episode in a series of crimes committed by the Quebec state, the dramatic effect of which was to remove it from the public domain. As Hannah Arendt noted, the public domain is our shared world. It is a space of appearance where things, material or not, are seen and heard by all, which allows the exercise of the political faculty par excellence: judgment. Why is showing up important? Because what is not seen and heard is deprived of reality, as all tyrants know. The demolition of the Museum was announced as early as 1992 when it was removed from the public domain after the MAC moved to the city center.
Indeed, while it had been visited, commented on, and admired by hundreds of thousands of people, the State then left it abandoned for five years. This is original sin. In 1997, the State disregarded its uniqueness by including it with other goods in the same transaction. Its new owner, the Casiloc subsidiary of Loto-Québec, has added more. An exceptional building, having housed exceptional works, from pre-Columbian art to Matisse, ended up in a common warehouse. Not content with flouting its dignity by removing its museum function, the company ransacked it to make it an authentic “service building”. In 2006, a heritage study documented its advanced disrepair and drew up a sordid list of modifications carried out inside and out.
Today, the site is managed by the real estate agency Trustcan and everything suggests that there has been no activity for years even if neon lights are still lit inside. As we approach, we are greeted by a “Private property, no entry” sign. But what is most striking is that the Museum is surrounded by excessive vegetation, the frightening effect of which is to make it invisible.
Arriving from the Bonaventure highway on avenue Pierre-Dupuy, it is difficult to see it behind the clump of large trees. It is also separated from the headquarters of the Montreal Port Authority by a plant screen. At the front, a shapeless hedge was planted on the former location of the two bodies of water which were located on either side of the entrance. With this hedge, all of the architectural specificity of the Museum is hidden from view: the cantilevered projection of the four rectangular spaces that make up the 2nd floor, a shape described as “remarkable” by many. Hide this Museum that I can’t see: that’s the motto for thirty years. Therefore, the idea of holding a public consultation on its future seems almost incongruous…
The State and its excrescences have chosen to eradicate a majestic object. They deprive future generations of a lasting witness to Expo 67, a unique event in History. They add to the disorientation of a consumerist society. They rob us of a place of public gathering, of an opportunity to judge the beauty or ugliness of what surrounds us. In short, they amputate the common world and send us back to our little lives.
The tragic fate of the Expo 67 Art Museum demonstrates that we are collectively prey to a deleterious anthropocentrism. It confirms that heritage policy is only the consecration of the right to destroy human artifice, and that sooner or later it will have to be replaced by a culture and a policy of things. We must hope that a party seeking to renew itself will grasp the importance of the common world.