International Symposium
Subjected, like all cultural institutions, to the system of the event imperative, art museums have accustomed us to an excess of events that go above and beyond simple exhibition programming. Nonetheless, architecture forms the basis of the most spectacular embodiments of the museum event imperative. Whether it is a matter of building a new museum or expanding a wing of an existing one, museum architecture constitutes an event in the most ephemeral sense of what that word implies today: a product of the media mill, more or less. But it can also establish itself as an event in the full, more traditional sense of the term; in other words, as a rupture, a turning point and a decisive moment in an institution’s history. To mark the opening of the new Pierre Lassonde Pavilion of the MNBAQ, the research and inquiry group CIÉCO is organizing the symposium The Museum as An Architectural Event, in order to look at contemporary variations on museum architecture and their impact on the lives of collections.
