THE CANADIAN MUSEUM OF CIVILIZATION EXHIBITION *LES PARADIS DU MONDE* - QUEBEC FOLK ART IS GOING ON THE ROAD!
Hull, Quebec, April 9, 1997 — The exhibition *Les paradis du monde* - Quebec Folk Art, designed and mounted by the Canadian Museum of Civilization (CMC) will visit four Quebec cities thanks to the Ford Motor Company of Canada's very generous financial support. Sherbrooke, Montreal, Quebec City and Jonquière will host this magnificent exhibition, which reviewers of the CMC presentation extolled as having "reached the dizzying heights of dreams."
The Ford Motor Company of Canada's decision to support the tour was strongly influenced by the exhibition's outstanding quality and by its desire for an even greater presence in communities within Quebec. The tour also allows Ford of Canada the opportunity to recognize the invaluable community-relations work undertaken by its many dealerships in the province.
*Les paradis du monde* begins its journey at the Musée des beaux-arts in Sherbrooke, where it will be on view from April 27 to June 22, 1997, before moving on to the McCord Museum of Canadian History in Montreal, October 25, 1997 to March 1, 1998. The exhibition will then travel to the Musée de la civilisation in Quebec City from May through September 1998. The tour ends at the Centre national d'exposition in Jonquière, where the exhibition will stay from November 1998 to February 1999.
Presenting Works in a Meaningful WayThe works gathered in the exhibition come from the CMC's three major collections of folk art: the "patenteux" collection, the English amateurs collection and the Marius Barbeau collection. In the course of the exhibition's evolution, works by regional artists were also added.
For this exhibition, guest curator Pascale Galipeau and members of the CMC's curatorial staff discarded a conventional thematic approach in favour of a contextualization that seeks to reveal the ideology underlying the conservation efforts of the various collectors.
Whether we look at ethnographer Marius Barbeau, a passionate researcher and attentive collector, the English amateurs and their energetic representative Nettie Sharpe, or the anthropologists of the 1970s and 1980s, we can see that each showed a marked preference for certain forms of creation. Through the choices they made, we are able to perceive the more or less realist, and sometimes frankly mythical vision, that each had of Quebec Society.
Thus the fact that Marius Barbeau preferred works from the classical French and regional tradition, that English collectors were fascinated by works of naïve art, and that collectors of recent years have concentrated on the playful inventiveness of the "patenteux," takes on significant connotations for the attentive observer. With this exhibition, the act of collecting Quebec folk art itself is on display, along with the works collected.
The title of the exhibition — *Les paradis du monde* — inspired by a work by Hosanna Dupuis of Maskinongé, evokes the secret country hidden within the soul that artists are endlessly driven to create. This wealth of artistic creation should prove to be a fascinating discovery for the people of Sherbrooke, Montreal, Quebec City and Jonquière.
Information (media):
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