Door kunstvlo op
October 29, 2009 02:12.
24 comments
Canada is a melting-pot of identities, that’s for sure. In Montréal everyone seems to be foreigner and at first sight that doesn’t seem to be a very big problem. On the contrary. There is an open-mindedness I really like: you can easily talk to people or people address you first. Also at the conference, the organizers do whatever they can to make it a pleasant experience for everyone.
Hurrah for globalization? I’m only staying for a couple of days so I am bound to be stuck with my impressions at first sight, but when I see how easily I can relate to Canadian people globalization is a fact.
Yet, at the conference Museality and intermediality. New Museum Paradigms it soon became clear that human relationships are something quite different than cultural traditions.
It is remarkable how we are all locked in by our own cultural traditions. Concerning museology there is a real rupture between Francophone and Anglosaxon traditions. Anglosaxon museum studies consider the museum as part of a social world and basically as a power institution. Change, transformation and dynamism are central concepts. In Francophone museology however the object seems to stay the key concept. Consequently, discourses on the meaning of the museum are quite different.
For me, a Flemish speaking Belgian citizen, this is all very interesting. Especially because it is not at all clear to me to which ‘cultural or museological tradition’ we belong. What a relief! It must be quite a burden carrying ‘a tradition’ around all the time.
I prefer to travel light, to have an open mind and to learn from all traditions along the way.
tagged: the guide, montréal, conference, museology
Door kunstvlo op
October 28, 2009 12:05.
11 comments
Canada, Montréal. That’ s where I’m staying since Monday night. I’m going to attend the conference Museality and intermediality. New Museum Paradigms organised by (amongst others) the Centre de recherche de l’intermédialité (CRI) of the University of Montréal, the Laboratoire de muséologie et d’ingénierie de la culture (LAMIC) of the University of Laval and the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT).
So I’m here for very pleasant professional reasons. The conference only starts today: yesterday I set off to explore the city and to get rid of my jetlag. As a museums and galleries person I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MACMTL) and the Museum of Fine Arts. By the way, the Montréal subway looks and feels just like the subway system in Brussels! Very strange. Earlier, the airport had also given me this same feeling of home.
In the MACMTL I saw exhibitions on work of Francine Savard, Tacita Dean and Tricia Middleton. The Museum of Fine Arts was very proud to present its collections of Mediterraean archaeology, decorative arts and design, European art, Canadian art, non Canadian art, art Inuit and contemporary art.
Both museums are what one would expect from museums. Nicely lit large boxes with artworks peacefully hung next to eachother on walls. Above, typical for the Montréal museums seems to be: very friendly staff ready to take your coat, to present a delicious Waldorf salad in the restaurant and to sell you very interesting books. Nice!
But still. When you have travelled as far as I have this is not enough. I had expected to see different things, I was ready to be overwhelmed by refreshing new museum approaches…
By the way, of course I saw things that were new to me like the wonderful collection of Inuit artworks in the Museum of Fine Arts, but they were displayed in such an old-fashioned way that I could’t get out of the room quickly enough.
Questions that popped up in my mind.
Why does every museum of fine arts in the world need an archaeological collection of Old Europe? In this day and age where we are all connected and travelling possibilities have increased tremendously it seems so over the top.
What does it say about our western cultural legacy when all art made in the twentieth century seems to refer to the European avant-garde?
What does this all mean for the museum as an idea? Hasn’t the time come to profoundly reconsider what museums are doing? It has.
tagged: the guide, montréal, macmtl, museum of fine arts, conference
