Committee: Barbara Baudinet, Josée Bélisle, Éric Bujold, Isabèle Chevalier, Julie Couture, Pascal de Guise, François Dufresne, Line Gagné, Eva Hartling, Danièle Patenaude, John Zeppetelli
In the spirit of a museum’s art acquisition committee, the eighth Collectors Symposium, generously sponsored by National Bank Private Wealth 1859, was held, quite unusually, in the exhibition galleries of the Biennale de Montréal, on Tuesday, November 4.
Co-chaired by Julie Couture and Pascal de Guise, this fundraising event for the Musée Foundation brought together some sixty guests who were invited to take part in selecting the next work that will enrich the Musée Collection.
The Curator of the Collection, Josée Bélisle, and MAC curators Lesley Johnstone and Mark Lanctôt presented three outstanding works featured in the Biennale de Montréal: Fatigues, 2014, by Abbas Akhavan; Liquidity Inc., 2014, by Hito Steyerl; and The Prophets, 2013, by Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens.
Following their deliberations, our guests selected the video installation by Hito Steyerl, Liquidity Inc. Born in Munich in 1966, the artist lives and works in Berlin. Using water as a metaphor, Steyerl sets up a large, curved structure, a sort of enveloping wave, covered with blue exercise mats like those found in martial arts studios. She tells the story of financial advisor Jacob Wood, born in Vietnam, orphaned by the war and then brought to the United States under President Gerald Ford’s Operation Babylift. Wood lost everything in the crisis of 2008. He then embarked on a new career in martial arts. Water plays a central role in this remarkable story, in large part because of the words of Bruce Lee, who explains that to succeed in martial arts, you must “be water.”
The Foundation wishes to thank Birks Group for its invaluable participation.
