oct 14
This week we had no class because it is reading week and the Fine Arts department took a trip to Montreal. We stayed at the Saint Lo Hostel which is downtown, within walking distance to Concordia. I went to lots of galleries, walked around, shopped, ate some good (expensive) food and then took a 12 hour bus ride home. I had a pretty good time.
group photo outside Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Metro Map
Montreal at night
Jean Basquiat, A Panel of Experts, 1982, I really liked how you could see the frame that he made himself. The painting is acrylic and oil pastel on paper that is mounted on canvas, with the wood of the frame sticking out. This piece stood out to me because it wasn’t “polished” and you could see the messy brush strokes and the layers of the work. It was interesting to see his painting in the same gallery alongside some of the older paintings with expensive ornate frames even though they are so different in construction and subject matter, they are still appreciated in the same way.
The first day we went to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, this gallery had tons of historical artworks, contemporary art works, a whole area dedicated to Kent Monkman, and a historical furniture exhibition. It took hours to walk around the whole thing. A few of my favourite pieces were:
Kent Monkman’s Death of the Female and Mad House. I took reproductive justice, a feminist and gender studies class last year and we talked about lot about the lack of reproductive health care for minorities in the prison system, specifically indigenous women and this piece reminded me of that. I really enjoyed the Kent Monkman exhibition, It was my favourite of the whole trip and I went back to visit it multiple times through out the few days I was there. Not only were the paintings really captivating , I was really interested in the subject matter.
A few days later I went to the McCord Stewart Museum, this is where I saw the piece I would write my curatorial analysis on. I also went to the temporary location of the Museum of Contemporary Arts (which was in the bottom of a mall?) It cost $15 and I had to throw out my coffee, so I was already in a bad mood but I was pleasantly surprised. There were lots of video pieces where you just sit and watch. One of them was like 13 hours long so I only saw about 15-20 mins of that one. The other one was a video projected on the walls and it followed a group of artists as they moved a famous historical statue that has racist and sexist background. they all dressed up in construction workers outfits and rented a truck with a crane on it and they moved it. I found this really clever but the crazy thing was that only a few weeks after I saw this, the Louvre was robbed in a very similar way.
Then on our way home we stopped in Quebec City (where I got food poisoning) at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. We had been on the road for four hours and had left Montreal at 6am so I was tired and not in the mood for a gallery however I did really enjoy the exhibition.
