Le discours muséal à travers l'exposition des collections de quatre musées d'art : Montréal, Québec, Joliette et Sherbrooke
Art museums are the perfect settings to gaze at past and actual works of art. According to their mandate, the museums have to conciliate two functions that can be difficult to manage, that is to say their functions of enjoyment and education. Some favor one approach instead of the other, but each museum is subjective in the way it exhibits works of art. Even if the art seems to be displayed naturally in the galleries, everything that is related to the conception and the realisation of the exhibition is the object of a construction and results from a decision of the museum. In accordance with their choices, that is to say which objects are presented or not, and the way they are exhibited, the museums contribute to define what art is, and influence the meanings of the works of art. Consequently, each museum transmits its own vision of art history and its institutional values. This particular discourse can be foregrounded as much by the writings installed near the works of art as by the museography around them. With a comparative analysis of four fine arts museums from the province of Quebec (Canada), this thesis explores a typology of museums discourses, as well as the intertwined relations between the different components of those discourses and the works of art that are shown in their galleries.
collection Museum exhibition Quebec art museum discourse