PAC Museum: The Greeks - Exhibition

THE GREEKS 
Agamemnon to Alexander the Great

December 12, 2014 - April 26, 2015

Pointe-à-Callière, the Montréal Archaeology and History Complex, present the world premiere of the original exhibition The Greeks – Agamemnon to Alexander the Great. The exhibition spans over 6,000 years of Greek history and culture and takes visitors on an exceptional and fascinating journey back to the origins of the cradle of Western civilization, its heritage and the traces it has left in the hearts and minds not only of the Greek nation but of all the people.

The exhibition brings together more than 500 priceless of artefacts from 21 Greek museums, coordinated by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports.

Greek Antiquity is a rich period populated by mythical heroes and historical figures, under the watchful gaze of the gods on Mount Olympus. The exhibition is divided into six zones that introduce this great civilization and showcase rare and priceless artifacts. Visitors will meet many famous characters in Greek history, from Homer to Aristotle, Plato, King Philip II of Macedon and King Leonidas of Sparta.  The heritage of ancient Greece, which we can still see all around us today in our politics, philosophy, arts and literature, mathematics, architecture, medicine and sports, is clearly illustrated in the exhibition. Visitors are invited on a tour of Greek history, starting in the 6th millennium BC, explaining all the roots. 

The exhibition takes us all the way up to the days of Alexander the Great, a larger-than-life figure who was only 20 years old when his father, Philip II, was assassinated. But Alexander was ready to succeed him, thanks to his education, his training and the formidable Macedonian army. Within barely a single generation, the ancient world was transformed from a series of independent city-states into a unified empire under Alexander the Great. The young prince who became king, emperor then god in the eyes of the world, died of a malignant fever at the age of 32. But his legend survived, as did Greece’s extraordinary legacy to the Western world. 

The exhibition offers visitors a whole range of interactives and items to handle, from a Cycladic female figurine to a reproduction of a warrior’s helmet and a sword. There are over twenty videos in the various exhibition zones, most of them produced by the National Geographic Society, the Acropolis Museum, the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens and the Canadian Museum of History. 

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Visit the Point-à-Callière Museum's website for more information.

The End of the Beggining: McCord Museum

THE END OF THE BEGINNING - Le Début de la fin

December 12, 2014 - March 15, 2015

The McCord Museum, as part of its Artist-In-Residence Program, is presenting an installation and a video work created by a Montreal artist Frédéric Lavoie who selected objects and images from the Museum's collection. His work offers a highly personal interpretation of the Museum's collection. 

Frédéric Lavoie has been given complete freedom to explore at length the McCord Museum's Notman Photographic Archives, ethnological and archaeological objects, costume and textiles, decorative arts and paintings, prints and drawings. He decided to create a work that examines the strange nature of our relationship with objects from the past. "I approached the McCord Museum collection from the perspective of post-apocalyptic fiction. The traces of events like war, natural disasters and epidemics in its archives led me to a cross-curricular exploration of the various collections that focussed on the diverse nature of the types of objects preserved at the Museum. The final work is presented as a video narrative constructed from the remains of a fallen civilization."

Some of the objects selected by the artist are displayed in showcases and trace the film's narrative. To shoot the video, in addition to working with images from the collection, Frédéric Lavoie made copies of several objects with the help of other visual artists.

The basic idea of the exhibition is that the history repeats itself, and the end of one phase becomes the beginning of the next historical reality which yet proceeds in the same circular manner as the one preceding it. Their are many allegorical comparisons from the present and even imagined future to the North American past events and realities.

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For more information visit the McCord Museum's website:
http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en

Love In Fine Fashion: McCord Museum

Love In Fine Fashion

November 20, 2014 - April 19, 2015

McCord Museum will present the exhibition Love In Fine Fashion, featuring some thirty elegant wedding dresses and an equal number of accessories, shoes, bags, gloves, stockings, garters and caps dating from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, all from the Museum's extensive Costume and Textiles collection, which includes 150 wedding dresses.

Every item on display has borne witness to a true love story, beyond the one constructed for the exhibition. The oldest among them–a cap and collar–date back to 1816, while the most recent are a 2008 wedding gown created by Helmer Joseph and a dress by Marie Saint Pierre from the same year, worn as a wedding dress by a young woman who loved the design. A grande dame of mid-20th century Montreal fashion, Gaby Bernier, is represented by one of her creations, as are designers Serge & Réal, with a dress created for a lavish 1984 Montreal wedding, and Michel Desjardins, whose elegant silk duchesse satin dress dates from 2006.

The exhibition is divided into eight themes that form the backbone of the story, which evolves along with the idiomatic expressions that express the sweethearts' shifting sentiments. Their initial meeting is haute en couleur[colourful] (zone I). He thinks she is fine comme une soie [fine as silk--lovely] (zone 2). Is she la perle rare [that rare pearl--the one] (zone 3)? And are they cut from the same cloth (zone 4)? For she does not alwaysfait dans la dentelle [wear kid gloves] (zone 5). Quelle tournure pendront les choses [How will things turn out] (zone 6)? For things can come apart at the seams (zone 7). But she is not à la traîne [hemming and hawing] (zone 8). Will their union be couronnée [crowned] with success?

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For more information visit the McCord Museum's website:

http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en

MMFA 2014: Warhol Mania

Warhol Mania: A Brand-new Look at His Advertising Posters and Magazine Illustrations

November 5, 2014 – March 15, 2015

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is presenting this new exhibition featuring Andy Warhol's fifty posters and an impressive selection of magazine illustrations created by the artist throughout his career. The items on display come from a private collection of Montreal collector and art historian Paul Maréchal. He started collecting Warhol's illustartion works and posters in 1996. Six years later in 2002, he acquired the last item and had to stop because Warhol's works became too prohibitively expansive. 

The exhibition also coincides with the publication of two catalogues written by Paul Maréchal about Warhol works. Both catalogues are available at the museum's bookstore. 

As a leader of the American Pop Art movement, Andy Warhol saw his works, together with his image, given wide media coverage. Amongst his final few disigns is the poster below, where he uses his own image. There were only 300 copies printed of this poster, most of which no longer exist.

It is important to note that Warhol illustrated more than 400 magazine issues, including more than fifty covers. Although they represent an important part of his career, few of the original drawings have survived. Indeed, more than 90 per cent of the illustrations were never returned to the artist. They were simply destroyed, the usual practice in a magazine’s graphic arts department. The magazine was considered to be the original; the drawing was just one stage in its creation.

Items on display represent only about 25% of Paul Maréchal's private collection. Yet a visitor will see some remarkable works.

A Pop Art icon, Warhol was an illustrator, painter, printmaker, avant-garde filmmaker and music producer. He was born in 1928 in Pittsburgh and died in New York in 1987. He completed a bachelor’s degree in commercial art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, and then worked in New York as a commercial artist for Glamour magazine, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. He received the Art Directors Club medal for his newspaper advertisements in 1952 and was honoured with other awards during the course of the decade.

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For more information, visit the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts's website:

http://www.mbam.qc.ca/en

MMFA 2014: Van Gogh to Kandinsky

Van Gogh to Kandinsky: Impressionism to Expressionism, 1900-1914

October 11, 2014 - January 25, 2015

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) presents a Canadian exclusive — the exhibition Van Gogh to Kandinsky: Impressionism to Expressionism, 1900‐1914. This exhibition offers to visitors over one hundred paintings and an equal number of drawings and prints executed by the greatest avant-garde figures of the beginning of the 20th century. The works on display shed light on the extraordinary artistic cross-currents that brought forth and helped to establish the major developments in modern art that took place in Germany and France between 1900 and 1914.

This exhibition was first on view in Switzerland at the Kunsthaus Zürich, and then at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The current Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ showing of the exhibition will be distinguished not only for its exclusive presentation of major works, but also for its wealth of documentation, including more than 200 photographs, stereographic images and magazines focusing on Paris in 1900, as well as chronicling World War I, providing a broad historical context for this creative era.

The art produced by the French and German avant-garde between the end of the nineteenth century and the outbreak of World War I is widely celebrated today. Its creators were artists renowned in France — Cézanne, Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso, Signac, Van Gogh, Vlaminck — and in Germany — Heckel, Kandinsky, Kirchner, Klee, Nolde, Pechstein. Their works, distinguished by their originality, power and beauty, are considered among the early masterpieces of modern art. When art history chronicled this fascinating era, two separate critical discourses emerged, positing distinct French and German movements. Thanks to the extensive research of Timothy O. Benson, curator of the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, this exhibition — exceptional by the importance of the works on loan — provides us with a broader understanding of the complex cross cultural influences during the time, which gave rise to this phenomenally rich and compelling artistic production.

For his part, the exhibition’s curator, Timothy O. Benson, declares: “I’ve always been fascinated with the formative stages of artistic creativity, as well as with how cultures interact, especially for modern art. A perfect opportunity for further exploration presented itself as scholars and curators became interested in the birth of both Expressionism and Fauvism a century after the fact, around 2005. Since that time I have had the privilege of working with scholars, curators, and collectors in Europe and North America to put together an exhibition examining the artistic revolution sparked by Van Gogh and Gauguin, and leading all the way to Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky’s innovative abstract art, a heritage still vital today.”

There arewWorks from 10 countries and over 60 lenders. The works on view in this  MMFA exhibition have been lent by major private collectors and museums ranking amongst the most prestigious in Europe, Canada, the United States and Asia. They include New York’s The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Washington’s National Gallery of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, Musée de l’Orangerie and Petit Palais, Berlin’s Brücke Museum, Kunsthaus Zürich, Hamburg’s Kunsthalle, Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, Madrid’s El Museo Thyssen‐Bornemisza, Geneva’s Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Kunstmuseum Basel and London’s Tate Modern. 

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For more information, visit the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts's website:

http://www.mbam.qc.ca/en

World Press Photo 14: Montreal 2014

World Press Photo 14

August 27- September 28, 2014


This year, once again, the Montreal World Press Photo 14 will be held at the Bounsecure market in Old Montreal. The selection of the photos is wide, and permits a visitor to see the best of the Press Photo selections in many categories.

The sport section is well represented. Just below are photos of Erza Show, USA, Getty Images, who won the 2nd Prize Sports Action Stories. His photos portray the 34th America's Cup which was held in San Francisco Bay in September 2013.

The three photos below are by Quinne Roney, Australia, Getty Images, who won the 3rd Prize Sports Action Stories by capturing photos during swimming championships.

Next photos are by Rena Effendi, Azerbaijan, Institute for National Geographic. She merited the 3rt Prize in Observed Portraits Story. Her stories are situated in Transylvania, Romania, and speak of everyday activities.

Elena Chernyshova, Russia,  won the 3rd Prize Daily Life Stories. Her photos show the life in Norilsk, in northern Russia, the second largest city within the Arctic Circle. The harsh realities of the winter, when temperature drop to -50 degrees Centigrade, comes to the full focus. It is contrasted with a photo that depicts an appreciation of a very brief summer.

Two photos below depict the animal world. They show a remarkable, human-like facial and gestural expressions of Banabos monkeys. The photos are by Christian Ziegler, Germany, for National Geographic. They won 3rd Prize Nature Stories.

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For more information visit the World Press Photo Montreal 2014 website:

http://www.worldpressphotomontreal.ca

Bens, The Legendary Deli: McCord Museum

Bens, The Legendary Deli

June 19 - November 23, 2014

McCord Museum is presenting a new exhibition about the famous deli Bens Delicatessen, the very first of the Montreal's smoked meat restaurants. McCord is a History Museum, yet this exhibition is set as an artistic installation the purpose of which is to capture the past, and to show how that past had been lived at Bens. The exhibition presents over 100 objects, including posters, architectural plans, photos, counter stools, dishes, utensils, menus, recipes, and individual testimonials that recount the history of that unique landmark.

This exhibition had been enabled by the generous donation of Bens' memorabilia to the McCord Museum by the Kravitz family. It is overseen by Elliot Kravitz, shown in the photo below at the McCord's press conference, a grandson of Ben (Benjamin) Kravitz, the founder of the Bens.

Below is the example of the tables and chairs used at Bens. It is interesting to note that the interior décor and the colour scheme was designed by Ben's wife Fanny. She claimed she chose that specific colour scheme because it had been tested to create a great appetite, yet at the same it made people to leave the deli quickly, thus liberating the place for new customers. Fanny also invented a special device just for women: under every table's corner there was a hook for women to hang their purses.

Bens restaurant existed for close to 100 years, from 1898 until 2006, and had been a vibrant fixture of the city of Montreal throughout the 20th century. Its smoked meat, atmosphere, and décor earned it a local and international reputation that attracted many celebrities including, for instance, Michael Jackson and Catherine Deneuve.

Below are additional views of the exhibition.

The last picture offers a glimpse of the famous Poets' Corner with photos of poets who had dined at Bens and were the deli's patrons.

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For more information visit the McCord Museum's website:

http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en

FABERGÉ at MMFA 2014

FABULOUS FABERGÉ
JEWELLER TO THE CZARS

June 14 - October 5, 2014

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is presenting the most important Fabergé collection outside Russia in an exclusive Canadian venue. 

The Russian jeweller Carl Fabergé (1846-1920) created precious objects for the Russian Czars Alexander III and Nicholas II in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The name of the Fabergé firm became synonymous with elegant craftsmanship and luxury jewellery. It is also associated with the final days of the Russian imperial family.

The exhibition features some 240 objects, including four of the most famous Royal Fabergé Easter eggs commissioned by the Romanovs, the Czar Nicholas II. They are all unique, one of the kind, as is the case of all Fabergé objects.

Below is a photo of a Fabergé Imperial Cesarevich Easter Egg with the Russian imperial double-headed eagle with the royal crown above it.

Large Fabergé eggs have a "surprise" inside them. The royal blue and golden egg's "surprise" is a diamond-clad royal double-headed eagle with the portrait of the imperial heir, Prince Alexei, son of the Czar Nicholas II. The royal crown hovers above the prince's head, yet he was never destined to become a king because all the royal family was murdered right after the Russian revolution.

Below is another Fabergé egg featured at the exhibition. It is Imperial Peter the Great Easter Egg. It has on the outside two portraits: one is of the Russian Czar Peter the Great (Peter I), the other is the portrait of the last Russian Czar Nicholas II. Inside, there is a miniature replica of the Saint Petersburg's large sculpture of Peter the Great on a horseback.

Below is a detail of the Imperial Peter the Great Easter Egg.

The exhibition also features enamelled picture frames, clocks, gold cigarette cases and knobs for walking canes, rock-crystal flowers, caskets and brooches encrusted with rubies. They still continue to fascinate as they did when they first appeared in the windows of the Fabergé stores in Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and London.

This exhibition was organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond in collaboration with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

The exhibition features a wealth of documentation on the history and tradition of the Orthodox Russia, the techniques of the House of Fabergé, and also those who forged Fabergé works.

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For more information, visit the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts's website:

http://www.mbam.qc.ca/en