The Minister of Culture and Communications, Mathieu Lacombe, tabled Bill 64 on Wednesday establishing the National Museum of the History of Quebec (MNHQ). The new institution must “testify to the evolution of the Quebec nation and the contribution of the communities who have shaped its journey and its territory”.
The MNHQ announced at the end of April by Prime Minister François Legault divides historians in particular on the question of the place of indigenous nations within the Quebec “community of destiny”. However, the bill does not specify the starting point of the national history which must be highlighted by the MNHQ. François Legault had already announced his preference for the founding of Quebec by Samuel de Champlain on July 3, 1608.
The MNHQ will be housed in the Camille-Roy pavilion of the Séminaire de Québec, on the land formerly occupied by Louis Hébert, the first settler of New France.
Until last March, this majestic building erected in 1854 at the top of the cliffs of Cap aux Diamants was to house the flagship of Espaces bleus, a museum network with branches in the 17 regions of Quebec. The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government axed this project after its estimated costs rose from 259 million to nearly a billion dollars.
It is within the framework of Blue Spaces that the Camille-Roy pavilion was recently renovated for $92 million. We then added a new glass entrance door leaning on the cut stones of this building topped with a roof covered with striped sheet metal.
As the MNHQ does not have its own collection, the 2500 m2 available must be furnished by drawing on the 680,000 artifacts in the reserve of the Musée de la civilization de Québec (MCQ) located at the foot of Cap aux Diamants.
The choice of objects will be determined by a scientific committee which will be joined by two external consultants, namely the historian Éric Bédard and the general and artistic director of the Society of Technological Arts, Jenny Thibault. The latter will have a decisive role in the development of the exhibition spaces of the future museum which must be the most digital in the country as announced by Minister Mathieu Lacombe.
The new institution becomes the fourth national museum of the Quebec state after the National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec which opened its doors in 1933, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Montreal founded in 1964 and the Museum of Civilization of Quebec inaugurated in 1988, four years after its creation under the PQ government of René Lévesque.