ARTH 375 Issues in the Montreal Art Milieu

• Instructor: Dr. Susan Surette

Within Canadian craft culture Québec has always had a singular reputation for producing and encouraging makers with a high level of both technical and design skills. As Québec’s largest, cosmopolitan, and wealthiest city, Montreal has been particularly influential in establishing and maintaining this status by way of its institutions and their support for craft makers and their works. Through lectures and on-site visits this course will explore, experience, and question the craft collections and curatorial strategies of four seminal Montreal area institutions that have been foundational in the encouragement, protection, display and education of craft practices and objects since the early twentieth century. Along with a high regard for skillful fabrication and good design, each has developed a unique focus towards craft that this course will examine. The four institutions that we will visit, where categories such as folk art, antiques, handicraft, fine craft, design, industrial arts, decorative arts, and public art collide, are: The Guild/La Guilde, The Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Montreal’s Public Art program. By applying feminist and decolonizing lenses, this course pays careful attention to the inclusions and exclusions of the collections and their displays.