This text is part of the special Museums notebook
Far from large urban centers, museum teams promote the work of hundreds of artists who have used — and still use — great sensitivity to interpret the world. What do Lanaudière, Estrie, Charlevoix, Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean or even Bas-Saint-Laurent have to tell us about our common history and the art that brings us together? Here are five extraordinary museums, located in the four corners of our vast territory, which have taken the challenge of transmitting beauty without compromise in their respective region.
Joliette Art Museum: ecology in the heart of Lanaudière
Ecology is the science which studies the relationships between living beings and the environment in which they evolve. But how can we express this discipline through art? For its fall season, the Joliette Art Museum (MAJ) has given itself the mission of exploring ecology in several artistic forms and through three temporary exhibitions.
Corbeil Project reflects the quality of human connections that solidify the social ecology at the very heart of the Joliette Art Museum. To create this exhibition – a true collective tribute to the painter Wilfrid Corbeil – we solicited the generosity and trust of several people who have in their possession works by Father Corbeil, founder of the MAJ. Putting these pieces together creates a veritable mosaic of stories and trajectories, improbable links and landscapes.
Can we continue to infinitely exploit the resources of a finite world? The exhibition Biophilia offers a reflection on our relationship to the natural world and constitutes a true “spiritual and sensual communion with nature”. The works of Zheng Bo, Montserrat Duran Muntadas, Jumana Manna, Katherine Melançon, Joshua Schwebel and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun breathe and follow one another like small, unique forests, demonstrating that art — like the artist — is nature.
Finally, the artist Julie Favreau, through Hunchespresents video, photo and sculptural works that explore the place of artificial intelligence within human and natural ecosystems. Until January 4.
Sherbrooke Museum of Fine Arts: where past and future come together
This fall, the Sherbrooke Museum of Fine Arts invites children aged 5 to 11 to “explore history from an indigenous perspective and imagine how all people can contribute to the world of tomorrow” through the futuristic saga Skawennati. Teiakwanahstahsontéhrha’ (We stretch the poles). Mohawk artist Skawennati offers a guided exhibition as well as a collective board game; fun ways to explore Indigenous history, virtual reality and critical thinking.
For parents (who are of course also invited to the immersive experience of Teiakwanahstahsontéhrha’), the Estrien museum also offers the exhibition Forgotten! Scott, Brandtner, Eveleigh and Webber. Revisiting Montreal abstraction from the 1940s. The works of these four little-known artists, pioneers of abstraction, allow us to discover their great talent and their openness to the major European trends in contemporary art. Until January 7.
Contemporary Art Museum of Baie-Saint-Paul: sublime views in Charlevoix
This fall, the Baie-Saint-Paul Contemporary Art Museum is presenting the works of two very important contemporary artists. The sublime body brings together several pieces by sculptor Jim Ritchie, whose skilled hands transform marble, bronze and other materials into simplified female figures. Sideways glances, for its part, is a retrospective exhibition of the work of the great Paryse Martin, a multidisciplinary artist whose work is sometimes expressed in magic, sometimes in strangeness. His sharp and playful outlook on life and human relationships is transposed into pieces with surrealist and baroque influences.
There is undoubtedly no more beautiful environment than Charlevoix in which to meet these two monuments of Canadian art. From November 5 to June 2.
Ilnu Museum of Mashteuiatsh: chronicles of Pekuakami
If art and territory have walked side by side throughout history, this is even more true among the First Peoples. In the temporary exhibition Mashteuiatsh, living on the banks of the Pekuakami — inspired by the book of the same name — art of living, crafts, architecture, cuisine and oral tradition come together in the form of chronicles, expressing all the cultural richness of the Pekuakamiulnuatsh, people of Pekuakami (or Lac-Saint-Jean).
The Ilnu Museum of Mashteuiatsh also offers the immersive permanent exhibition Tshilanu Ilnuatsh (We the Ilnuatsh), through which Kukum (grandmother) and Mushum (grandfather) guide visitors according to the seasons and traditions. A visit to the Ilnu Museum is an extraordinary way to introduce your whole family to the fertile history of Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean and the Pekuakamiulnuatsh. Until May 13.
Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent: a river, geese, art
The work of the artist Stéphanie Robert, like part of that of the famous Jean Paul Riopelle, seems to draw its source from the St. Lawrence River and the sky above it. The Lower Laurentian painter presents Re-enchantment, through which she explores the spiritual bond that humans have with Nature; “an invitation to revive one’s presence in the living world and to move towards a sensitive reconnection”.
In a second fall exhibition, the Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent brought together several works by the painter Jean Paul Riopelle, born in 1923. The exhibition Riopelle. Crossed looks is a celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the artist’s birth as well as a heterogeneous corpus presenting certain pieces created by Riopelle between 1947 and 1984. The exhibition is accompanied by a screening of the film Take the north by the choreographer and director Chantal Caron, also very inspired by the river, which she encounters daily from her native Côte-du-Sud. River and moving creations to see. From October 27 to January 14. (And until March 10 for Riopelle. Crossed looks)
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