This text is part of the special section Museums
Artists, athletes, journalists and professionals from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) have each chosen a work from the permanent collection and tell why in video or audio format. All on the Echo application directly on your smartphone thanks to the use of image recognition technology that you can use during your visits to the MMFA.
It is on the fourth floor of the MMFA, where none of the other personalities had dared to venture, that Stéphane Aquin, the director general, chose the work he is presenting in Écho. It’s about painting Dido by Andrea Mantegna created around 1500, at the end of the artist’s life.
“It’s a small work, but truly one of the museum treasures of one of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance,” says Mr. Aquin, attached to New York, “the world center of art”.
He also points out that the MMFA is the only Canadian museum to have a work by Mantegna and one of the very few in North America. “It’s also a work that tells the story of Dido, who was the queen of Carthage, and Aeneas, who fled Troy,” he explains. He falls in love with Dido, but he has to go and found Rome, so he leaves Dido who, miserable as stones, commits suicide. The work shows Dido with a sword and with the vase Aeneas gave her when she arrived in Carthage, then at her side, the stake on which she is going to immolate herself. It is a very beautiful work, with false textures. »
The application, co-developed by the MMFA and the Montreal company La Maison Jaune Laboratoire d’innovation, also allows you to discover the favorites of Marie-Philip Poulin, multiple Olympic medalist hockey player (she notably won gold in Beijing). , Joséphine Bacon, Innu poet, Matthieu Dugal, host and journalist, Denis Gagnon, fashion designer and Annabel Soutar, playwright.
“Before, we had the audioguide, a text often written by a museum curator read by someone who has a radiophonic voice,” explains Mr. Aquin. With the Echo app, we wanted to adopt a different tone. There are all kinds of ways to talk about art and works. Advances in technology allow us to develop more inclusive and flexible mediation tools. »
Released last fall, the Echo application sees its content regularly enriched. “For example, we added some for the Bourgie Pavilion, then there will be some for the Stewart Pavilion, then we will create some for the collection of Japanese netsukes, these little ivory statuettes,” says Mr. Aquin. It’s easy for us to add content and new stuff doesn’t take away the rest. The application can really be rich after several years. »
Last chance for Ecologies: an ode to our planet
Until April 3, you can visit the exhibition at the MMFA Ecologies: an ode to our planet. The works, mostly from the MMFA’s permanent collection, testify to the relationship between humans and nature. If the word ecology evokes ecosystems populated by an abundant variety of species that cohabit in diversified habitats, it also inevitably refers to the environmental crisis. A crisis that primarily affects peoples who live in close relationship with nature, such as Indigenous peoples.
We find in this exhibition nearly 90 works in rotation: drawings, installations, paintings, photographs and sculptures created by artists such as BGL, a collective of artists from Quebec. We discover their installation Arctic Power at the heart of which a snowmobile is suspended like a frozen carcass and recalls how this machine came to transform modes of transport in the Far North and cause ecological damage.
Also featured is artist Edward Burtynsky, from Ontario, with his work oil spill noh 1, REM Forza, Gulf of Mexico, May 11, 2010.
Adrian Stimson, a member of the Siksika Nation in Alberta, is also featured in this exhibit with irretrievably losta 2010 work that features a stuffed bison and the pelts of this animal that he uses as a symbol of the destruction of the Aboriginal way of life.
We also see in Ecologies: an ode to our planet the greenery of Lorraine Gilbert with LeBreton Flats, Ottawa and Boreal forest cover, La Macaza, Quebec from the series “Once upon a forest”. Like what there is also a bit of life in this exhibition. And we really need it.