Of the 47,000 works in the permanent collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), only 3,500 are signed by women, and 1,000 by Indigenous people. It is this imbalance — and other shortcomings toward marginalized communities — that the museum is now trying to correct through its acquisitions.
It is also with this in mind that the exhibition was created. Two by two gathered togethers, which takes its title from a song by Pierre Lapointe, opens this week. Drawing from the corpus of acquisitions made by the museum over the past five years, Iris Amizlev, curator of special projects, has paired paintings by form, subject and period, creating surprising associations that draw the viewer into their own reflections.
The MMFA’s chief curator, Mary-Dailey Desmarais, also took advantage of the exhibition launch on Tuesday to discuss the museum’s process for acquiring works. Faced with a huge gender imbalance in its collection, the museum wants to use its new acquisitions to redress the situation.
“We need to address these gaps, of course, by focusing our attention on artists who have been – and are – underrepresented in the collection,” she says.
The history of art and its shortcomings
In general, women are almost absent from a certain history of art. A non-presence partly explained by the fact that, for long periods, they did not have access to fine art schools, in particular because they drew men’s bodies using live models, explains Mme Desmarais. “There are also anonymous artists in the collection. It is very likely that these artists were women painters who did not have the recognition they should have had.”
“All of these factors have accumulated over the years to ensure that women are underrepresented in collections,” she summarizes. The MMFA’s chief curator admits, however, that women are also underrepresented in the museum’s contemporary art collection, a testament to past biases in acquisition committees.
The exhibition Two by two gathered together thus attempts to compensate for these shortcomings. For example, a duo brings together a small sculpture by Louise Bourgeois, The coupleand a photo from John Max’s Infinite Passport series depicting the photographer’s relatives. Inuit artist Manasie Akpaliapik’s masterful piece, Nunatta Sapujjingit (“Protectors of the World”), carved from an enormous whale bone, faces Let’s go: tseltun (“Indigenous People Playing on the Land”), by Cowichan-Okanagan artist and environmental activist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. On the theme of self-portraiture, a work by Stanley Février showing a head protected from earthly calamities by bubble wrap is paired with a self-portrait by Rembrandt.
All of these works were acquired by the MBAM over the past five years, and only two of them have ever been presented to the public.
Donations and purchases
Returning to the methods of acquiring the works presented by the museum, its chief curator, Mary-Daley Desmarais, recalled that 80% of acquisitions come from donations. The remaining 20% are purchased by the MMFA, whose annual budgets do not exceed one million.
Mme Desmarais also specifies that the works donated to the museum are subject to the same acquisition criteria as the works he buys, particularly on questions of legitimacy, authenticity and good condition.
It sometimes happens that the museum sets aside funds for several years—and surveys its patrons—to acquire a coveted work. The MMFA is planning to purchase a work by an Italian Renaissance artist in the near future. In the permanent exhibition, which has just been reorganized, you can see a painting by the American artist Christina Quarles that was recently purchased.
The MMFA has also just begun a process of pruning its collections, something that has not been done “since the 1940s,” says its chief curator. Once again, strict criteria will be applied: the number of times the work has been exhibited over the past 30 years will be taken into consideration, among other things.