The art gallery in the underground, unknown to the public

Photo Nadia Lemieux

Nadia Lemieux

Sunday, 18 February 2018 19:20

UPDATE
Sunday, 18 February 2018 19:25

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Few metro riders know that they scour every day a true underground art gallery of nearly 90 works. A new company has given itself a mission to discover this facet of the metro in Montreal.

Alongside Stockholm and Moscow, Montreal was the pioneer of the movement, recognizing the importance of aesthetics in the metro, we learn in the first few minutes of a guided tour organised by the company Art in common.

Photo Nadia Lemieux

Its founder, Judith Bradette-Cuff, explains that even before its construction in the 1960s, the City had the ambition to make the metro an underground art gallery. “We do not understand at what point it was something innovative, because they were not obliged to do this, but it was one of the largest public art projects of the time.”

Debate artistic

The City would be responsible for the time the position of artistic advisor of the metro to Robert LaPalme, a good friend of the former mayor Jean Drapeau. “His vision was to make the metro a great book of history with an educational and commemorative, a very traditional art to the public,” said Ms Bradette-Cuff.

Photo Nadia Lemieux

Mr. LaPalme was criticised by the Society of professional artists of Quebec, who was accused of his conservatism. “The subway was a place of movement and modernity, the art that would have had to reflect these two aspects,” she mentioned.

Photo Nadia Lemieux

The guided tour of the underground art gallery, you can see that these two visions co-exist.