Christian Boltanski

Les Archives du Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 1992

© The Estate of Christian Boltanski / SOCAN (2022) • Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay

Christian Boltanski, Les Archives du Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, © The Estate of Christian Boltanski / SOCAN (2022) • Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay

© The Estate of Christian Boltanski / SOCAN (2022) • Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay

Christian Boltanski, Les Archives du Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, © The Estate of Christian Boltanski / SOCAN (2022) • Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay

© The Estate of Christian Boltanski / SOCAN (2022) • Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay

Christian Boltanski, Les Archives du Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, © The Estate of Christian Boltanski / SOCAN (2022) • Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay

© The Estate of Christian Boltanski / SOCAN (2022) • Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay

Christian Boltanski, Les Archives du Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, © The Estate of Christian Boltanski / SOCAN (2022) • Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay
Artist
Christian Boltanski
Title
Les Archives du Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
Dimensions and medium
Metal shelves, 336 cardboard boxes, 336 labels, 196 colour photographs, and 16 electric lamps, 132 × 380 cm (dimensions of the surface)
Artwork description
Since the late 1960s, Christian Boltanski has devoted himself to a multidisciplinary practice that creates narrative links to reality, history and memory. Commissioned by the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal as part of its downtown relocation in 1992, Boltanski’s in situ installation, Les Archives du Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, is comprised of 336 cardboard boxes stored on metal shelves. Each box features the name and photograph of each of the 336 construction workers involved in the building of the museum. Permanently installed in a specially conceived space on the staircase landing that leads to the museum’s basement level, the work exists as a veritable memory vault.

See Also

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