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Sunday, October 03, 2004

Le Devoir does Le Musée d'art contemporain

Howdy!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I'm still in catch up mode, gimme a break, ok? I'm writing as fast as I can.

Two weeks ago, Le Devoir devoted what looked like an entire freakin' section to the Musée d'Art Contemporain. First, as I only saw it on line, I would love to know what the breakdown of the ads in the print edition was. Second, I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in Guy Cogeval's office when he saw it.

That all being said, as an extremely generous and over the top way to welcome Marc Mayer into town, I think Le Devoir came through with flying colors. If memory serves, they were the only paper that wrote anything when the announcement was made, and their article after his press conference was head and shoulders above everybody else's. Why then they felt the need to pile it on and on and on, I don't know, but they did.

1. Bernard Lamarche wrote an article about the history of Le Musée d'art contemporain, 1,732 words.
2. Mylène Tremblay wrote an article about the near future of the museum, 1,479 words.
3. Bernard Lamarche wrote another article about other people's opinions of the museum, 995 words.
4. Ulysse Bergeron wrote an article about the museum's art collection, 946 words.
5. Ulysse Bergeron wrote a second article about how the museum is a kick-ass place to learn things about art, 933 words.

So if you've been doing your math, that's a total of 6,085 words about Le Musée d'art contemporain. I wonder how many more words they're going to be able to accumulate in between now and December.

As an aside, the museum itself has not been able to figure out how to update their website, yet so as to show the recent changes.

M. Lamarche's first article can be summed up like this: The museum was started in 1964 by Otto Bengle and Georges-Émile Lapalme, because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Before it moved (for the third time, in 1968) it was sorta all over the place and things were difficult. In 1972 they were finally able to score some serious cash from the government and things started to happen. In between 1968 and 1992 there were a bunch of directors. Marcel Brisebois was able to get the museum to move again in 1992 to a place that was too expensive in comparison to MoMA Queens. A guy he quotes a lot throughout the article, Laurier Lacroix, thinks that things are hunky-dory, but as with anything, there is always room for improvement.

Without even reading Mme. Tremblay's article, I can sum it up like this: The suff that's gonna happen at the museum in the fall and winter is going to be amazing! Now, after reading it I should clarify things slightly, Mme. Tremblay says the things that are going to happening at the museum are going to be significant.

M. Lamarche's second article quotes Pierre Théberge, Carl Johnson, and David Moos (respectively a former director of the Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal, and currently the director of the National Gallery, the director of the Rimouski museum, and the curator of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Ontario) saying that the MACM rocks. It might've been nice to hear what some people outside of the country thought.

In M. Bergeron's first article the one thing I find interesting, is that he writes that the museum's collection includes 4,225 pieces of art by Quebecois artists, 975 pieces by Canadian artists, and if you do the math ('cuz he doesn't write it) 1,300 pieces by artists not from Canada. Gawd! I love Quebecois Nationalism!

More later, I gotta get back to real work.

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