Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 296

March 11, 2016: Puerto Rican Posts: Sotomayor’s Story

[On March 9th, Raúl Juliáwould have turned 76. To honor one of the most famous and talented Puerto Rican artists, this week’s series will feature a handful of Boricua blogs, leading up to a special weekend post on Puerto Rican statehood!]On what’s profoundly cultural about the Supreme Court Justice’s autobiography, and what’s not.When President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to replace retiring Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court in May 2009, he certainly knew he was making history by nominating the first Hispanic American Justice. Yet I don’t imagine he could have expected how much her contentious nomination debate and process would come to hinge on her ethnic heritage and identity, and more exactly her self-image as a judge in relationship to that identity. In the course of the media investigation into her legal and professional career, a 2001 symposium speech was discovered in which Sotomayor responded to an oft-quoted Sandra Day O’Connor point that “a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases,” arguing instead that “First … there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.” Reading of the full text of the speech, hyperlinked above, is necessary before fully analyzing this particular line, but in any case the quote does reflect Sotomayor’s connection of her heritage to the law.The controversy notwithstanding, Sotomayor was confirmed to the Court in August 2009, and a few years later she wrote and published an autobiography, My Beloved World (2013). The first half of that book focuses fully and potently on Sotomayor’s childhood in the Bronx, as the daughter of parents who had moved from Puerto Rico a few years before her 1954 birth, and includes extended portrayals of both parents, as well as her beloved Abuelita (her father’s mother and the custodian of a number of Puerto Rican customs and practices), her aunts Titi Carmen and Titi Gloria, and many other family members. As a self-identified Nuyorican, Sotomayor engages at length with what that Puerto Rican family and heritage (as well as her annual summer trips back to the island) have contributed to her individual identity and perspective. Indeed, by choosing to end this autobiography before her time on the Supreme Court (perhaps to set up a future second volume), Sotomayor turns the book into somewhat more of an autoethnography, one that could be said to lay out an extended argument for the speech’s argument about what Latina community and identity might contribute to the development of a future judge’s professional and legal perspective.Yet at the same time, Sotomayor opens the book with a Prologue that narrates the origin points of one of the most individual aspects of her life and identity: the diagnosis of type 1 diabetes when she was seven, and her subsequent decision (due to other individual factors including her father’s alcoholism and her mother’s burgeoning depression) to administer her daily insulin injections to herself; she concludes the Prologue with the first of those self-administered injections. In the book’s Preface, Sotomayor writes that one of her main goals in writing it has been to chronicle how “the challenges I have faced” (with “chronic illness” chief among them) “have not kept me from uncommon achievements,” and thus to achieve a particularly inspiring audience effect: “People who live in difficult circumstances need to know that happy endings are possible.” While of course some of Sotomayor’s difficult circumstances (including those aforementioned personal issues facing her parents) were intertwined with her cultural heritage, and specifically the experience of migrating to the United States from Puerto Rico, she chooses to frame the book most overtly with diabetes, a far more individual and intimate circumstance. As with any life and world, Sotomayor’s are both communal and individual, and her autobiography powerfully narrates each level.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other PR connections you’d highlight?

March 10, 2016: Puerto Rican Posts: J. Lo and Marc Anthony

[On March 9th, Raúl Juliáwould have turned 76. To honor one of the most famous and talented Puerto Rican artists, this week’s series will feature a handful of Boricua blogs, leading up to a special weekend post on Puerto Rican statehood!]On the linked but divergent paths of two of the most famous Puerto Rican American musicians.It’d be difficult to argue that the most prominent Puerto Rican American musician of all time wasn’t Tito Puente; anybody known as “The Musical Pope” and “The King of Latin Music” has a pretty good initial argument on his behalf, and Puente’s more than half a century of recording, performing, and bandleading—as well as his lifelong advocacy for fellow Latin American musicians and artists—backs up the claim. But right below the King, as the unofficial Prince and Princess of Puerto Rican (and perhaps even contemporary Latin) American music, I’d have to locate two of the 21st century’s most successful recording artists, and a pair who happened to spend ten years as husband and wife: Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony. Born in New York City less than a year apart, Lopez and Anthony’s biographies and careers have had numerous similar moments and arcs, even if we leave aside their decade of marriage—but there’s also a key difference that reflects two distinct possibilities for Puerto Rican and Latin American artists.Perhaps the clearest link between Lopez and Anthony is how they’ve redefined success within their respective cultural and artistic fields. Lopez was the first woman, and only the second artist period (after Prince), to have a #1 album and the #1 film at the box office in the same week, with 2001’s J. Lo and The Wedding Planner respectively; indeed, I would argue that Lopez is one of a very short list of artists who have had extended successful careers in both music and acting (rather than being best known for one and occasionally venturing into the other, as is the case for most folks on that hyperlinked list). Anthony is generally considered the most popular salsa artist of all time, whether judged by the total sales of Spanish-language albums such as Otra Nota (1993) and Todo a Su Tiempo (1995), by his triple-platinum English-language solo debut Marc Anthony (1999), or by a single like “Vivir Mi Vida” (2013), which spent a record-breaking 18 consecutive weeks atop the Billboard salsa charts. Although the notion of artistic crossovers—whether between media and genres or between languages and cultures—is of course not new to the 21st century, it’s become far more prevalent and central to our current moment than ever before, and no artists embody that narrative better than Lopez and Anthony.Yet on that second type of crossover, between languages and cultures, there’s a striking difference between the two. Ten of Anthony’s twelve albums to date have been recorded in Spanish (and the first of the two English-language ones was an early career collaboration with Puerto Rican artist Little Louis Vega), compared to only one of Lopez’s eight albums. Again, the difference can’t be explained in terms of origin or geography, as both artists were born in New York City to parents who had migrated from Puerto Rico. Musical genres and niches have played a role, as Anthony’s choice to work in the more overtly Spanish genre of salsa (compared to Lopez’s pop/dance emphasis throughout her career) has likely necessitated more connection to that language. Yet at the same time, I would argue that Anthony’s and Lopez’s respective recording choices and arcs reflect the complex, evolving, and hugely critical 21st century question of Spanish’s place within our shared American landscape—a question, of course, with which the American territory of Puerto Rico has dealt for well more than a century. I can’t pretend to be able to do that question justice in a sentence or two, so will just add this: starting last year, my boys’ elementary school requires two Spanish classes per week for every student (as part of their standard school day), and I couldn’t be happier.Next Puerto Rican post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other PR connections you’d highlight?

March 9, 2016: Puerto Rican Posts: Raúl Juliá

[On March 9th, Raúl Juliáwould have turned 76. To honor one of the most famous and talented Puerto Rican artists, this week’s series will feature a handful of Boricua blogs, leading up to a special weekend post on Puerto Rican statehood!]AmericanStudying three iconic performances from the legendary actor.1)      Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985): Juliá had been appearing in films for nearly fifteen years by the time he was cast as Brazilian political prisoner Valentin Arregui in Héctor Babenco’s much-acclaimed drama (based on Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel). Although it was his co-star William Hurt who took home the Academy Award for Best Actor, Hurt was already well known by the time, so I would still argue that Juliá’s was the truly breakthrough performance. Partly that’s because of the complex love story, and culminating sex scene, between the two men, one that is particularly striking for Juliá’s character since (unlike Hurt’s) he does not begin the film as gay. But it’s also due to the layered humanity that Juliá brings to the role, turning what could be a stereotypical image of far leftist political radicalism into one of the more memorable characters in 1980s films.2)      Romero (1989): Four years later, Juliá returned to Latin American political films in a parallel yet also very different role: Óscar Romero, the El Salvadoran Archbishop who spearheaded years of peaceful political protests against the country’s military dictatorship before his tragic 1980 murder. Romero is far more blunt in its politics than was Kiss, and far less interesting or successful as a film as a result; but in part because of that straightforwardness, Juliá’s Oscar Romero became one of the strongest and most inspiring Latin American characters featured in American films (and one directed by , no less). Although the film does not focus much at all on the long and dark relationship between the US and the Salvadoran government, if it inspired any American viewer to learn more about Romero (as well as those who murdered him), such historical knowledge and shifts in perspective would likely have come with the territory.3)      The Addams Family (1991): And then there’s Gomez Addams, the role that unquestionably brought Juliá to the broadest popular audience (and that he would reprise two years later in Addams Family Values ). As that latter clip illustrates, even in the midst of these deeply silly movies—and I’m not even going to try to make the case that they’re much more than that, although they do at least celebrate weirdness in the same ways the original TV showdid—Juliá found a way to bring his talent and fire to the project. When he died only a year after Values, at the tragically young age of 54, he left behind a wealth of such compelling performances, and a career as one of the greatest Puerto Rican artists.Next Puerto Rican post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other PR connections you’d highlight?

March 8, 2016: Puerto Rican Posts: Martín Espada

[On March 9th, Raúl Juliá would have turned 76. To honor one of the most famous and talented Puerto Rican artists, this week’s series will feature a handful of Boricua blogs, leading up to a special weekend post on Puerto Rican statehood!]A few complementary ways in which the Puerto Rican American poet portrays his heritage.In this post I highlighted Martín Espada’s amazing poem “Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper” (1993), which engages with issues of class, labor, and communal and individual identity as well as any brief literary text ever has. If Espada has had one central thematic focus across his long and influential career, it would have to be the intersections of those issues, and the political and social perspectives that they can produce; see, to name only a few examples, “Imagine the Angels of Bread,” “Vivas to Those Who Have Failed: The Paterson Silk Strike, 1913,” and “Federico’s Ghost.” As that last poem illustrates, certainly Hispanic American experiences and identities come into many of Espada’s political works—but in a way that usually, intentionally cuts across any specific national or cultural categories or heritages. That is, whether one is from Puerto Rico or any other Latin American community (we don’t learn Federico’s original nationality, even though the threat to “call immigration” makes clear that he has come from elsewhere) is in these works much less significant than the type of work one performs and the social stratum in which one resides.Like any great poet, however, and especially one who has published across multiple decades and collections, Espada is large and contains multitudes. Among them are many poems that do engage specifically with his Puerto Rican heritage; Espada was born in Brooklyn (in the year of West Side Story’s release!) to parents who had moved from Puerto Rico a few years before, and the island continued to play a prominent role in his childhood and family. That’s particularly clear in the dense and evocative “,” which links Espada’s surname to the many linguistic, cultural, historical, and familial legacies it conjures for the poet; while some are not specific to Puerto Rico, most are profoundly tied to the island’s identity. And that poem’s intellectual and often dark portrayal of Puerto Rico is contrasted with and complemented by the descriptive and sensory “En la calle San Sebastián” (subtitled “Viejo San Juan, Puerto Rico”), which captures the colors and images, beats and sounds, celebrations and legacies of a historic communal space in the Puerto Rican capital. Taken together, these two poems illustrate just how fully and complicatedly Puerto Rico has continued to resonate in Espada’s perspective, identity, and literary career.Yet whatever Puerto Rico meant and still means to Espada, he was born and raised in Brooklyn—and in one of his funniest and perhaps most personal and revealing poems, “Coca-Cola and Coco Frío,” he reflects on precisely the question of what the island could and could not signify to a child of America (and vice versa). The poem depicts a “fat boy” making “his first visit to Puerto Rico, island of family folklore,” and finding there the presence of both a familiar American drink (Coca-Cola) and a shockingly unfamiliar island one (coco frío). On the one hand, the poem posits an ironic contrast, portraying a Puerto Rico that has adopted American products and traditions while (indeed, at the price of) forgetting their own. Yet at the same time, by keeping the poetic perspective entirely with this young boy, Espada undermines such easy dichotomies: yes, the boy feels, upon tasting coco frío for the first time, “suddenly, Puerto Rico was not Coca-Cola/or Brooklyn, and neither was he”; but of course he is still Brooklyn (born and raised), as much as he is Puerto Rico too, raising the question of just how separate these seemingly distinct places and worlds truly are.Next Puerto Rican post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other PR connections you’d highlight?

March 7, 2016: Puerto Rican Posts: West Side Story

[On March 9th, Raúl Juliá would have turned 76. To honor one of the most famous and talented Puerto Rican artists, this week’s series will feature a handful of Boricua blogs, leading up to a special weekend post on Puerto Rican statehood!]On the musical’s surprising history, and its limits and strengths as a cultural text.If the original 1947 plan developed by Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, and Arthur Laurents had come to fruition, this post would have to be part of a series on Holocaust history or Jewish American identities instead. Robbins’ original concept, as fleshed out in collaboration with those two artists, was for a musical he called East Side Story, a reimagining of Romeo and Juliet that would focus on the forbidden love between a Jewish immigrant girl (a Holocaust survivor) and an Irish Catholic boy in New York’s Lower East Side, as well as the parallel communal conflict between the Jewish “Emeralds” and the Catholic “Jets.” Robbins’ completed a first draft, but the project didn’t go further—until nearly ten years later, when other work brought the three men back together. By that time re-emerging Chicano American communities (such as those in New York’s “Spanish Harlem”) had become more prominent in national media, and when Laurents revised the prior book for the version that became West Side Story (1957) he made the heroine Puerto Rican. The rest, of course, is musical theater history.The fact that the heroine’s cultural and ethnic identity shifted so dramatically, relatively late in the creative process, might suggest that the specifics of her heritage were not crucial to the musical. Indeed, I would argue that in many ways Maria could have remained Jewish in the final version without much else changing (the Holocaust history would of course have been a significant addition). There is one place in the show that does focus very overtly on Puerto Rican identity, however: the song “America,”and the debate it features between Anita (who prefers the US to Puerto Rica) and Rosalia (who favors the latter). Partly because Anita has a far more significant role in the musical (as the girlfriend of Maria’s brother and the Sharks’ leader Bernardo) than Rosalia, and partly because she consistently gets the last word in the song’s call-and-response form (ie, the closing exchange, “Everyone there will give big cheer!”/”Everyone there will have moved here!”), the song largely endorses Anita’s perspective on the island. And it’s a pretty negative perspective, one that opens with “Puerto Rico … you ugly island” and continues with lines like “Island of tropic diseases” or “And the babies crying/And the bullets flying.” Not the most inspiring pop culture portrayal of this American community.Yet the song also includes, in a chorus voiced by the entire group of girls rather than either individual speaker, an image of precisely that Americanness: “Immigrant goes to America/Many hellos in America/Nobody knows in America/Puerto Rico’s in America!” Seen in that light, the choice to make Maria Puerto Rican is a far more significant one: an acknowledgement of this New York and American community, one as much a part of the nation’s fabric as those of European American heritage exemplified by Maria’s lover Tony (Anton); if not, indeed, more so, since coming from Puerto Rico to the United States does not constitute an international act of immigration like those undertaken by Tony’s ancestors. And along those same lines, both the musical and film versions of West Side Story brought prominent Puerto Rican actresses into mainstream popular culture: Chita Rivera, who played Anita in the original Broadway version and went on to a long, groundbreaking careerin musical theater; and Rita Moreno, who won an Academy Award for her Anita and went on to become the first Hispanic performerto win an Oscar, Grammy, Tony, and Emmy Award. Robbins and company might not have planned to make their musical into a Puerto Rican and American milestone—but in some unexpected and key ways it became that nonetheless.Next Puerto Rican post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other PR connections you’d highlight?

March 5-6, 2016: Canadian Colleagues

[Having CanadianStudied sites of Montreal memory this week, I wanted to end by highlighting a few of the many wonderful Canadian colleagues I’ve met in my career!]First, a few prior posts that have featured Canadian colleagues:--These two on the awesome and talented Ian Williams, who was my FSU colleague for too short of a time before returning to Canada where he continues to do amazing work;--This one on international AmericanStudiers, in which I highlighted Maureen Mahoney (whose great AmericanStudies career has continued to evolve).--And this one on Toronto-area book talks, which featured two Wilfrid Laurier University colleagues Debra Nash-Chambersand Kevin Spooner; that post also highlighted the University of Toronto’s Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library, where I met the great Lucy Gan.Finally, while I didn’t have the chance to meet in person the Canadian colleagues I featured in this 2015 Northeast MLA wrap-up post on the conference’s inspiring performances, each of them both embodies a particular strength of the humanities and models a life and career working in this field. Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Colleagues, Canadian or otherwise, you’d highlight?

March 4, 2016: Montreal Memories: Anglais and French

[Late last year, I had a chance to spend a few days in Montreal, my first extended visit to the city. Among the many reasons I loved it was the plethora of compelling spaces and ways through which the city remembers its social, cultural, and artistic histories. So this week I’ll CanadianStudy a few such spaces, leading up to a special post on a few Canadian colleagues!]On two ways Montreal’s bilingualism can serve as a model for America.If many of the week’s historical and cultural issues I’ve highlighted in this week’s posts would be present in any Canadian (or American) city, there’s one very clear element that distinguishes Montreal (and most of the province of Quebec of which it’s part) from them: its ubiquitous bilingualism. Because my traveling companion speaks French and wanted to honor this part of the city, virtually every encounter we had—from restaurant waitstaff to store clerks, museum docents to public transporation employees, and many more—was conducted in a combination of Anglais and French. And we never encountered a single person who could not switch between the two languages effortlessly, nor one who seemed unready or unwilling to do so. I’m sure there are Montreal residents who know or prefer only French (and I know there are broader political issues at play when it comes to language and identity in Quebec), but on a communal level Montreal is by far the most consistently and thoroughly bilingual city in which I’ve spent any time.As such, Montreal can serve as a clear model for how American cities might evolve into a more fully bilingual future. Although “Press 1 for Spanish” has become an easy touchstone for conservative fears (to be clear, and I hope obviously, I don’t endorse a single word of that article) about a changing national identity, the truth is that such accommodations have arisen because of the growing community of Spanish speakers across the United States. Indeed, as of the 2010 census some major cities (such as Miami and Anaheim) and many smaller ones (such as Laredo, Texas and Lawrence, Massachusetts) already featured Hispanic majorities. It would seem to be a logical step for those cities—and many others across America, if not the nation as a whole—to strive to cultivate a genuinely bilingual identity, not just in recognizing or including both languages (as has already begun to happen in at least those “Press 1” kinds of ways) but in helping educate a citizenry who (like Montreal’s) all speak both shared tongues. Besides the clear intellectual and neurological benefits of bilingualism for individuals, this shift would help our communities become more united and engaged, more in conversation in both literal and figurative ways.Yet as I’ve long argued, both in this space and in my books, America has been multilingual throughout its history, and Montreal thus also offers a lesson in how we think about our past. Virtually every major American city could foreground its multlingual past more fully, after all: New Orleans would be the obvious starting point (and as I’ve written here does do so in some key ways), as would California cities like San Diego (and ditto); but it would be interesting and important to think as well about how New York might include Dutch in its collective memories, how Detroit could do so for French, how all of Alaska could do so for Russian, and so on. All of those languages and cultures/communities remain present in those places today, but again it’s not just about the present—it’s just as significant to remember these linguistic histories, and in so doing to engage with their contributions to the places’ and our nation’s identities. In that way, after all, Montreal is no more bi- or multilingual than are most American cities and communities—and can offer a valuable model for how we might begin to better remember that side of ourselves.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Sites of collective memory you’d highlight?

March 3, 2016: Montreal Memories: Vieux Montréal

[Late last year, I had a chance to spend a few days in Montreal, my first extended visit to the city. Among the many reasons I loved it was the plethora of compelling spaces and ways through which the city remembers its social, cultural, and artistic histories. So this week I’ll CanadianStudy a few such spaces, leading up to a special post on a few Canadian colleagues!]Three telling spots that together capture the complex past and present of Old Montreal.1)      The “First” Public Square: A small sign on the side of a historic building on Place Royale designates that area (known then, at its 1657 origin point, as Place du Marché) as “The First Public Square of Montreal.” Which makes sense with that important “of Montreal” modifier in place—the New France settlement (really fort, initially) had been founded just fifteen years earlier, in 1642, and I certainly believe that it took that long to organize enough of a true city that it would need and feature a public square. But as that last hyperlinked piece notes, there was already an existing First Peoples village, known as Hochelaga, when the first French explorers arrived in the area—and I think it’s safe to say that its inhabitants had public gathering places of their own. So that “first,” while technically correct in its context, represents the same kind of historical elision I’ve highlighted in the week’s earlier posts.2)      Notre-Dame Basilica: I think it’s just as safe to say, however, that the village of Hochelaga encountered by Cartier and his fellow explorers did not have a Catholic church. Neither for that matter did the settlement of Montreal for its first three decades—the city had a small Jesuit parish from the outset, but it was not until 1672 that the church of Notre-Dame (on which constructed began in 1657) was completed on the Place d’Armes. And while that church was apparently much larger and more impressive than the first, it was only in the early 19th century that the stunning cathedral we know today was built. That’s one thing that Notre-Dame reflects, then: the multi-century development of Montreal, from that initial frontier outpost through its gradual expansion and into its enduring status as one of the world’s great and most cosmopolitan cities. But as any 21st century visitor can attest, the city and its region are also defined once more by the French heritage with which they began, and Norte-Dame is a vital symbol of that cultural presence as well.3)      The Waterfront: Montreal wasn’t settled by the French because of religion, though—it was settled because of its on the St. Lawrence River, and what that would mean for the fur trade and the overall development of New France. It’s been a long time since the waterfront served such a vital purpose, as the imposing presence of the abandoned Canadian Malting Silos illustrates. But that doesn’t mean that the waterfront, like Old Montreal more broadly, doesn’t have a role to play in the 21st century, and while there I had the chance to experience one example of how that historic waterfront has been remade: Bota Bota, a Nordic baths spa located in a refurbished and refashioned barge. Spas alone aren’t the answer to revitalizing a historic neighborhood, of course—but neither is simply preserving historic sites without finding ways to make such areas new at the same time. As Bota Bota reflects, Old Montreal is working to do both, and it’ll be exciting to see where the neighborhood and city go from here.Last memory tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Sites of collective memory you’d highlight?

March 2, 2016: Montreal Memories: The Museum of Fine Arts

[Late last year, I had a chance to spend a few days in Montreal, my first extended visit to the city. Among the many reasons I loved it was the plethora of compelling spaces and ways through which the city remembers its social, cultural, and artistic histories. So this week I’ll CanadianStudy a few such spaces, leading up to a special post on a few Canadian colleagues!]On the pavilion that artistically complements the McCord and Pointe-à-Callière Museums.Like many fine arts museums, including Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (usually referred to as the MFA, and the fine arts museum with which I’m most familiar), the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is divided up into distinct wings (known in this case as pavilions) that feature art and objects from across the world and throughout human history. There are extensive pavilions dedicated to Archaeology and World Cultures, to both Early to Modern and Contemporary International Art, and to both Decorative Arts & Design and Photography & Graphic Arts, among other sections. As a result, it would take multiple visits to truly experience and appreciate all that the museum features; in keeping with our trip’s Montreal and Canadian focus, we spent the majority of our time in the Claire and Marc Bourgie Pavilion, home to the bulk of the museum’s collection of Quebec and Canadian Art. And I’m very glad we did, as in both its structure and its specific collections the Bourgie Pavilion offers a unique and compelling vision of Canadian history and identity.The pavilion’s structure (described at length in the sections of this web page) is particularly striking and engaging. Five of its six floors move visitors across the region and nation’s chronology: in reverse historical order, from the ground floor up, visitors move through Expanding Fields (1960s-1970s), The Age of the Manifesto (1940s-1960s), Toward Modernism (1920s-1930s), The Era of Annual Exhibitions (1880s-1920s), and Founding Identities (1700s-1870s). The top floor is dedicated to Inuit Art, a choice that does replicate both the separation I highlighted in the McCord Museum and the sense of First Peoples as past I found in Pointe-à-Callière, but one that also allows for an impressively extensive collection of Inuit works and artists (both historical and contemporary, I should add). I can’t quite describe the experience of ascending through those floors and moving back in time across those moments, but it was most definitely more than just a sum of the parts, offering both compelling glimpses into the influences and shifts across time periods and a fascinating method for engaging with a place’s and people’s histories through art.Because that overall experience of the pavilion resonated with me so potently, I don’t remember any individual work or item from any one of those floors with the same clarity. But the floor and period that struck me the most was the Era of Annual Exhibitions, which told its own compelling historical story (that of the founding of The Art Association of Montreal, a direct precursor to the Museum of Fine Arts that began presenting annual art exhibitions in the spring of 1880) through the work of such prominent artists as painter Ozias Leduc and sculptor Alfred Laliberté (among many others). Too often, I find that art museums present individual works and artists relatively devoid of context (other than the details provided in the accompanying labels); while I understand how that can allow us to focus on the works themselves, the AmericanStudier in me really wants to engage with the contexts alongside those works. And if the overall structure of the Bourgie Pavilion represents one impressive layer of historical context for Quebec and Canadian art, it also helps create, within an individual collection like that housed on the Era of Annual Exhibitions floor, a complementary, more specific and equally engaging such context. All of which add up to one of the most interesting fine arts museums I’ve encountered!Next memory tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Sites of collective memory you’d highlight?

March 1, 2016: Montreal Memories: Pointe-à-Callière

[Late last year, I had a chance to spend a few days in Montreal, my first extended visit to the city. Among the many reasons I loved it was the plethora of compelling spaces and ways through which the city remembers its social, cultural, and artistic histories. So this week I’ll CanadianStudy a few such spaces, leading up to a special post on a few Canadian colleagues!]On the limitations and possibilities of archaeological history.Complementing the McCord Museum, and offering its own engagement with Montreal and Canadian history and identity, is Pointe-à-Callière, the Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History. Its archaeological focus allows Pointe-à-Callière to feature some interesting and unique permanent and temporary exhibitions inspired by that subject, such as two I had the chance to visit: “Pirates or Privateers,” a permanent exhibition that uses archaeological and anthropological finds to explore the ambiguous histories of that worldwide nautical community; and “Investigating Agatha Christie,” a temporary exhibition that details the role that archaeology (and prominent archaeologist and Christie’s second husband Max Mallowan) played in the life and writing of the world’s most translated author. But despite these and other exhibitions, the museum seeks first and foremost to use archaeology to portray and interpret Montreal’s history, and in so doing it reveals both the weaknesses and the strengths of that method.The weakness has a great deal to do with the site and timing of the museum’s founding. As that piece details, Pointe-à-Callière was the spot of Montreal’s 1642 founding by French explorers and settlers; the museum opened in the same site as part of the city’s 350th anniversary celebration in 1992. As a result much of the museum, from its impressive use of archaeological remains in the basement’s permanent “Where Montreal Was Born” exhibition to the multimedia show which makes use of those remains to welcome visitors to the museum, focuses entirely on that French founding as the city’s and museum’s starting point. That multimedia show does include a brief starting point on the First Peoples village that had long existed in the area by the time the French arrived—but, in part because there seem to be no archaeological remains of that village and in part because of a decided “us and them” tone to the show, those First Peoples are presented much more as a prior and even opposing community than as a part of the city’s history and identity. Of course there are plenty of museums of archaeological history that can and do focus on indigenous peoples—but the version presented at Pointe-à-Callière quite simply and frustratingly does not do so.With that important proviso, however, I would nonetheless highly recommend a visit to Pointe-à-Callière. As I walked through that basement “Where Montreal Was Born” exhibition, my first thought was that it had to have been assembled, that at least some of the multiple centuries’ worth of remains present there had been moved from other places and finds. But (not for the first and certainly not for the last time) I was wrong—a combination of preservation, archaeological excavation, and just plain luck has allowed Pointe-à-Callière to feature those multiple stages and periods of the site’s history in one entirely authentic place, where and how they existed as the city developed around them. As that article on the museum’s website succinctly describes it, “The way the remains are superimposed in this one spot offers a sort of condensed history of Montreal.” Indeed it does, and a unique and extremely compelling such history it is, one made possible by archaeology and by a museum that literally and figuratively builds upon that discipline. We can critique what Pointe-à-Callière leaves out and still appreciate and learn from what it reveals.Next memory tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Sites of collective memory you’d highlight?