Donation from the Canadian Cultural Centre of Paris to the Archives of Art Criticism
On May 18, to mark the inauguration of its new Exhibition Space on the 130, Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, under the direction of the Canadian Embassy for Global Affairs, donated 25 years of its visual arts archive to the National Institute of Art History (INHA) to be part of the collections of the Archives of Art Criticism in Rennes. This was a unique donation, combining cultural diplomacy with a view of Canadian Contemporary Art.
The programme of exhibitions and artistic practice reflected by the archive, was pursued in partnership with French cultural institutions and with the history of art criticism in France. The archive is a register of the period from 1993 to 2017. The archive also gathers documents regarding the history of the Centre since its foundation in 1970. Its methodological consistency, the diversity of its contents and its cultural sphere constitute an inestimable resource for national and international research. The exchange with artists, curators, critics, authors at the core of this collection preserves, not only a profile of institutional relationships, but of human connections which led to countless projects of great significance in France, under the direction of Catherine Bédard, Associate Director of the Canadian Cultural Centre and member of AICA France.
©INHA
The first part of the archives was donated last March and is already available for research in Rennes. The second will be at the Archives’ disposal in autumn 2018. The partnership anticipates that transfers will continue, preserving and enhancing the history and the activities of the Canadian Cultural Centre at its new venue in Paris.
The Archives of Art Criticism were greatly enriched by this donation, which will enhance and give new meaning to the individual art critics, galleries and institutional archives already present in the collections.
(original text in French by Nathalie Boulough)