Quebec’s National Museum of Fine Arts is dimming its lights and inviting visitors to look differently and longer at the works it presents in its new night exhibition. See the night.
Why longer?
3 seconds. This is the average time a museum visitor spends viewing a work in a museum. Might as well say a wink.
“In three seconds we don’t have time to make a connection to the work, to search through our memories. We don’t have time to live an experience in three seconds,” says exhibition curator Maude Lévesque.
By plunging the exhibition spaces of the Pierre Lassonde Pavilion into darkness, by covering the floor with carpets to muffle the sound of footsteps and, for the first time in the MNBAQ, by eliminating the explanatory texts that traditionally accompany the works for accompanying the gathering until the exit, the artisans of Voir la nuit believe they can slow the pace of visitors and encourage them to think more about what they are looking at.
In this series of nighttime landscapes we can admire the different methods artists use to illuminate nighttime scenes. Photo Stevens LeBlanc/Le Journal de Quebec
“It is a new relationship to the work of art that we want to convey. Visitors are more challenged in terms of their sensitivity. Instead of dictating or prescribing a meaning based on information, we allow visitors to interpret the work freely,” explains collection director Guillaume Savard.
“The night robs us of the perfect view. We become more aware of what is happening around us. We are more intuitive. “That’s why it made sense not to include texts,” adds Ms. Lévesque.
Stars and horrors
Voir la nuit consists of 62 works by 45 artists, mainly canvases, photos, sculptures and objects from the MNBAQ collections (with some loans from the Musée de la Civilization). Voir la nuit highlights the works of some great artists such as Marc-Aurèle by Foy Suzor-Côté, Clarence Gagnon and Jean-Paul Lemieux.
With its selected works, the exhibition aims to question our relationship to the night. Night owl or sleeper? Creative or fearful?
“We all have a personal relationship with the night. I remember spending hours in the garden as a child looking at the stars. It can also be night terrors,” mentions Maude Lévesque.
The common thread that unites the body of Voir la nuit? “Light,” answers the inspector. The way artists approach nightlight. This allowed us to create sections: night landscapes, intimate night consisting of interior scenes in chiaroscuro or candlelight, and the city we find ourselves in in more hysterical works. »
Photo Stevens LeBlanc/Le Journal de Quebec
- See the nightto be seen in MNBAQ from November 2, 2023 to March 17, 2024.