To mark its 85th anniversary in 2018, the MNBAQ will open five new exhibition rooms devoted to ancient and modern art. In keeping with changes in museology and society’s current perception of its heritage, the MNBAQ wishes to highlight the individuals who have shaped the history of Québec art.
Visitors can follow the careers of the women and men who have made Québec what it is today, from copyists to the Automatists, from the beginnings of the market to the explosion of artistic trends. This major event will encompass nearly 700 works (paintings, sculptures, the work of silversmiths and goldsmiths, furnishings, the graphic arts and photography) that propose a new perspective of several distinctive and occasionally little-known works from the MNBAQ’s collection.
The reorganization of the exhibition space and creative, diversified use of digital mediation will offer the public a multidimensional experience. The departure from conventional discourse on the works, emphasis on voices marginalized by classical history, the interlinking of works with visual and media culture, and the integration of the history of photography in Québec are but a few of the innovations that digital mediation facilitates. Sustained by visual culture, the history of cultural life, gender and postcolonial studies, 350 Years of Artistic Practices in Québec seeks to offer a bold synthesis of the history of visual culture, from New France to the counterculture of the 1960s.