Do you ever find yourself in a museum, looking but not seeing? This happened to me recently on my three-day retreat in the Metropolitan Museum. On my second morning, I was wandering from gallery to gallery, and I couldn’t quite register what I was seeing. I was so inundated with beauty that it was all blurring together. That’s when I decided to go on a photo safari, a trick in my museum toolbox that [...]
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 MoreIt was 9:50am and I was freaking out. The Metropolitan Museum of Art would open in ten minutes, marking the beginning of my three day visit of its galleries. But I had absolutely no idea where to start or how to structure my time in the museum. I felt blocked like an artist in front of a blank canvas. That's when I decided to tweet [...]
Read MoreMy Montreal museum cocktail for the week led me to the small museum in Saint Joseph's Oratory, the grand basilica located on one of Mount Royal's peaks. I had already passed the Oratory and its enormous dome several times, and I was excited to learn what it was exactly. On a sunny May day, I arrived at the base of the Oratory's hill and was faced with seemingly never-ending outdoor stairs winding their [...]
Read MoreMontreal - Points of View, a permanent exhibition at the McCord Museum, gives the visitor an overview of Montreal's history. It takes 10 different facets of the story, presenting the historic districts and people through objects, video interviews, and texts. There was a lot of history to process, especially for someone [...]
Read MoreThere is a museum that has intrigued me since I moved to Montreal. Each time I go to my favorite microbrewery Dieu du Ciel in Mile End, I pass a palatial fire station with a sign advertising the Musée des Pompiers (Firefighter Museum). I hadn't visited it yet, as it has the smallest window of opening hours imaginable [...]
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 MoreClaude de Ramezay was the governor of Montreal from 1703 to 1724. He decided that, as governor, he needed to have a grand home that befit the importance of the office. Ramezay went a little overboard, spending way too much of his own money. But the Château earned him bragging rights [...]
Read MoreMy first ever museum was the glorious University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) in Ann Arbor. UMMA has always been a magical place for me. As my hometown museum, it was a cabinet of curiosities for my young self. I saw things there unlike anything I had ever seen: intriguing objects from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe. During a trip this month to see my family in Ann Arbor [...]
Read MoreExactly four years ago, I found myself in Denmark. I had just survived my first semester at the École du Louvre. The term had culminated with eight exams in five days; each exam was basically a choice between two broad questions with three hours to answer one of them. I celebrated my birthday with an exam [...]
Read MoreI had been waiting all morning for the Creativity Factory to open. I was visiting the Montreal Science Centre with two of my favorite kiddos (and their mom and dad), and we had spent the morning learning about the human body. But I was anxious to get to an exhibit called Fabrik - Creativity Factory. "What [...]
Read MoreThis month's creativity theme is CELEBRATION. For my first December museum visit, I went to the Redpath Museum, McGill University's natural history museum. The museum feels very old school: temple-like stone façade, lots of carved wood, the occasional hand-written label... The museum also [...]
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 MoreI just visited the McCord Museum for the first time, and I am utterly delighted. The McCord is a "public research and teaching museum dedicated to the preservation, study, diffusion and appreciation of Canada’s, Quebec’s and Montreal’s history". Having just moved to Montreal, I was excited to [...]
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 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 MoreOne of my favorite parts of the day is opening new tabs in my Chrome web browser. Since I installed the Google Art Project extension for Chrome, navigating the internet has become much more cultural. This extension makes it so that an artwork from the Art Project is displayed [...]
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 MoreGarlands in Paris in the midst of a creativity series on the theme of Love. Today, I’m excited to introduce you to Sara, who reflected on this month's theme in New York City. Sara is one of the most creative and caring people I know, so I was excited to get her take on love in a museum. Here's Sara: Bonjour! I’m Sara of Simply Sara Travel, my [...]
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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.
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