[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,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Sites of collective memory you’d highlight?
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