“Excuse me,” demanded a tourist armed with an open Louvre map and a huge camera, “where is the art?” I had been standing with my nose in an intricately sculpted wooden frame that was, in fact, empty. Indeed, all the frames surrounding us in the gallery were missing their paintings, their raisons d’être. The resulting room was quite eerie at first [...]
Read MoreThe Metropolitan Museum of Art wants visitors to work on their museum fitness. The Museum Workout is a 45-minute workout session covering two miles of the The Met before it opens in the morning. Two dancers, dressed in sequined dresses and tennis shoes, lead participants through group exercises and stretches, including yoga in the sunny [...]
Read MoreI went to the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition looking for calm. It’s been an intense week; the semester is halfway over, which means the projects for my seminars need to be at a certain point of completion. When I saw that I had an hour-long pocket in my schedule on Tuesday, I decided to fill it with some Toulouse-Lautrec [...]
Read MoreElisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun was a celebrated 18th century French portraitist and one of the most important women artists of all time. I had the pleasure of seeing the exhibition dedicated to her life and work at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa (the exhibition also took place at the Grand Palais and the Met). This is the first retrospective and only the second exhibition devoted to Vigée Le Brun in [...]
Read MoreI visited the Met’s exhibition Court and Cosmos in a very particular way. This month’s museum theme is TECHNOLOGY, and I wanted to give myself the constraint of visiting an exhibition with this lens. Court and Cosmos turned out to be an apt choice of exhibition, with technology evident in both the objects and their display. Have you ever heard of the Seljuqs? I definitely hadn’t, although they were the [...]
Read MoreI finally made my way to the Virtual Reality Garden at the Centre Phi, a "multi-disciplinary arts and culture hub" in Old Montreal. The Virtual Reality Garden is a permanent installation of four Oculus Rift stations loaded with virtual reality content. The programming changes throughout the year, and the experience is always free. The current exhibition is [...]
Read MoreHands down, The Library at Night is one of the coolest exhibitions I've been to lately, maybe ever. It explores ten great libraries of the world using virtual reality. It's more than an exhibition: the virtual reality makes it a personal experience. I cannot recommend it highly enough. In a nutshell, The Library at Night (La bibliothèque, la nuit) is a "virtual exploration" of [...]
Read MoreThe Montreal Museum of Fine Arts just opened a large exhibition on Pompeii, with over 220 archeological artifacts. I was blown away (yikes, pun not intended). The objects were exceptional, from the colorful wall frescoes to the almost 2000-year-old bowl of olives. And the scenography was gorgeous; I [...]
Read MoreI've been really excited lately by creativity in museums and the creative process in general. In this first Creativity Round Up, I thought I'd try something new, and gather together some links found across the internet. I present to you a handful of inspiring examples of creativity and reflections on the creative [...]
Read MoreI assumed that my first winter in Montreal would be covered in snow. Prior to my move here this October, I obsessed with preparations for winter: I stocked up on puffy coats, heavy-duty boots, strap-on cleats for icy days... Friends, it is now December and this is the weather. Rain?! Perhaps this explains [...]
Read MoreThere is a ridiculously cool exhibition now on in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Seventy songbirds fill a room littered with electric guitars on stands. As the birds perch on the strings of the guitars, they create a cacophonous song of pre-recorded rock, punk and heavy-metal chords. The installation [...]
Read MoreWearing Our Identity: The First Peoples Collection, the permanent exhibition at the Musée McCord, is fascinating on many levels. It elegantly explores the role of clothing in the "development, preservation and communication of the social, cultural, political and spiritual identities of First Nations, Inuit [...]
Read MoreA Brief History of the Future is unlike any exhibition I’ve ever seen in the Louvre. Based on Jacques Attali’s book of the same name, this musée imaginaire faces off ancient objects with contemporary commissions, creating a commentary on the nature of society and a reflection on the [...]
Read MoreThe Musée d'Orsay is currently displaying Dolce vita ? Du Liberty au design italien (1900-1940) in its 6th floor galleries. The exhibition covers Italian design from the early 20th century when Italy was still newly united, to the rise of Mussolini’s regime. The diverse styles found in [...]
Read MoreHere is a round-up of exhibitions in Paris starting in September 2015. Check out my Cultural Calendar page to see a large selection of exhibitions currently on!
Read MoreNapoléon et Paris at the Musée Carnavalet offers a glimpse at the steamy relationship between Napoleon and the city of Paris, presenting “Paris as seen by Napoleon and Napoleon as seen by Parisians”. I would describe the exhibition as jam-packed and elegant, not two words [...]
Read MoreEvery summer, Paris installs sand and beach chairs along the Seine for a few weeks for an event called Paris Plages. And for the second year in a row, the Musée du Louvre is participating with an activity area, complete with reproductions of artworks from its collection [...]
Read MoreThe exhibition “Tea, Coffee or Chocolate?” at the Museum Cognacq-Jay is rich despite its compactness. The exhibition presents the rise of ‘exotic’ beverages in 18th century Europe, from the origins in international commerce to the gradual integration in the daily routines of Europeans. The curatorial content of the exhibition [...]
Read MoreThe Grand Palais exhibition’s Lumière ! Le cinéma inventé feels like my ‘Cinema 101’ university textbook came to life. Filled with the major mechanical inventions of early cinema and many projections of films, the space feels like a cabinet of wonders. The exhibition places a large emphasis on the Lumière brothers, Louis and Auguste, and [...]
Read MoreHere is a round-up of exhibitions in Paris starting in May/June 2015. Check out my Cultural Calendar page to see a large selection of exhibitions currently on! I am so excited about the exhibition on contemporary stained glass windows at the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine. The Musée Cognacq-Jay's exhibition on 'exotic' 18th century [ ... ]
Read More
This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer.
IMAGINIBUS is a blog about playing in museums, with a focus on imagination and creativity.
This blog is a place to be inspired to use your imagination around artworks—and to see the art of your daily life.
When we engage creatively with art, museums can become playgrounds and laboratories to experiment with attention, mindfulness, and imagination. Interesting things happen when we use that museum gaze to look at our daily lives like a work of art.
Find more inspiration for playing with new ways of paying attention to your daily life here.
Hello! I'm Marina Gross-Hoy, a writer, Museum Studies PhD candidate, and mother currently living in Quebec. I take playing in museums very seriously.
Read more about the blog here.
Check out my newsletter on Substack to be inspired to see the art in your daily life.
