Generations. The Sobey family and Canadian art | Canadian history on display at the MNBAQ

Until May 12, the exhibition Generations. The Sobey family and Canadian art takes place at the National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec (MNBAQ) and allows you to see nearly 150 works from the Sobey family collection. From Tom Thomson and Alex Coville to Jean Paul Lemieux and Kent Monkman via Paul-Émile Borduas and James Wilson Morrice, the event presents major milestones in the history of Canadian art.

The exhibition immediately underlines the importance of this philanthropic family particularly committed to the promotion of art. It provides access to the artistic tastes of three generations of collectors. The completion of the project, put into circulation thanks to the McMichael Collection, coincided with the 20^e anniversary of the Sobey Art Award, recognition and great visibility for contemporary artists created by the Sobey dynasty.

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Generations. The Sobey family and Canadian art takes place within the most important museum in terms of the memory of Quebec artists with nearly 42,000 works in its collection. “It’s a challenge to hold an exhibition of Canadian art in a Quebec art museum,” underlines its general director, Jean-Luc Murray. The event not only brings into the MNBAQ spaces productions that are often less seen given their acquisition by a private collection, but the exhibition also offers bodies of work complementary to those in the MNBAQ collections.

The event underlines that the border is more porous than we think. Works associated with regionalism meet those of the Automatists and the Group of Seven. For example, Tom Thomson’s representations of villages echo those of Clarence Gagnon, Maurice Cullen and Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté. Abstract paintings by Paul-Émile Borduas refer to the landscape paintings of J. E. H. MacDonald or Lawren S. Harris. One of the rooms shows the influence game between Emily Carr and Arthur Lismer.

The scenography encourages these dialogues and allows us to rethink the lineage of an era, an artist, a movement or even a theme to another, in a transversal manner. If the exhibition offers such a spatial arrangement which frees itself from classic chronological presentations, it already fits with the strategies of the MNBAQ whose hanging of the collections is innovative. Indeed, the reputation of the museum is well established since the exhibition 350 years of artistic practices in Quebec led by the curator of modern art, Anne-Marie Bouchard, which consisted of redeploying nearly 600 works in the Gérard-Morisset pavilion.

The Sobey family serving art history

Generations. The Sobey family and Canadian art is, among other things, an opportunity to show a unique perspective of telling the history of art. This is the case of the numerous genre scenes, autumn and winter landscapes of the 19th century artist^e century Cornelius Krieghoff which rub shoulders in the rooms with paintings by the current artist Kent Monkman, known for deconstructing the codes of history painting.

To understand the issues, the exhibition ensured that the layout is always guided by clear explanations which provide reading keys and make the experience accessible to the public. The labels accompanying the works criticize the romanticized vision of life in the 19th century^e century, and sometimes erroneous, paintings by the Dutch painter Krieghoff. This vision is put into perspective with Monkman’s productions inspired by European painting and which denounce the colonial heritage. Two eras thus face each other for the benefit of a current discourse.

Works off the beaten track

Among these great names of artists who have traced their path within the bodies of art history for a long time, the public will be able to discover the works on paper of the third generation Inuit artist from Kinngait in Cape Dorset Annie Pootoogook, which takes a contemporary look at its community. Creations by Cree artist Brenda Daney and Montreal-based Kaska Dena Nation artist Joseph Tisiga present scenes that match colonial and Indigenous cultures.

The Sobey family also has in its collection works of marginal artists, less known, but well appreciated by members, including the work of William Kurelek, which occupies a pride of place in Donald Sobey’s collection. Coming from a Ukrainian Orthodox family, the artist highlights the importance of community in small Ukrainian villages on the Prairies. The Sobeys also include, among their acquisitions, works on the history of the Acadian deportation in the 18th century.^e century by New Brunswick artist Mario Doucette.

One of the creations worth seeing is the installation Large museum hall (2014) by Ursula Johnson. The artist who received the Sobey Art Award in 2017 pays tribute to Mi’kmaq women who have been making baskets for generations.

In short, the exhibition wishes to offer an experience of intuition and emotion around the works – rather than an intellectualization of them. Above all, it is an opportunity to bear witness to possible encounters between the art market and the museum, between the private collection and the public institution, to participate in a rewriting of art history.

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