I recently had the pleasure of visiting the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts with its musical audioguide. The first stop on the audio tour was a French statue of the Virgin and Child from the 14th century. The cult of the Virgin Mary was very common in both the visual and musical cultures of that time. This [...]
Read MoreWhen I learned last year that the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts offered a musical audioguide, I believe I actually scoffed. A musical audioguide seemed like taking what can be a stereotypically unsexy museum offering and making it even more unattractive. I don’t know exactly what was expecting, perhaps being subjected to fuzzy elevator [...]
Read MoreHistoric châteaux differ from traditional museums in an important aspect: seasons. When I think about visiting most museums, I focus on what I’ll be seeing on the inside. But with historic châteaux and houses, I add in the factor of the time of year I will be visiting. I love making the pilgrimage to the Château de Malmaison during rose [...]
Read MoreOctober's museum theme is CALM. All month, I'll be looking for moments of calm in museums, because #PhD... It's only been a month since I started my PhD program here in Montréal, but I'm already feeling a bit overwhelmed. My museum attendance has also been dwindling (moment of honesty: I've only been to one museum this month [...]
Read MoreA year ago, I was preparing to move from Paris to Montreal. A major strategy in emotionally processing this big change was to visit as many Parisian museums as possible. One of the museums I visited was the Musée Picasso, recently reopened after being closed for a five-year renovation project. After following the dramatic saga of the delays for the opening, there was no way I could leave town before [...]
Read MoreI had a truly magical museum experience in San Francisco's SFMOMA. After much anticipation, I finally had the opportunity to test the museum’s innovative new app in its natural setting. I went to SFMOMA with my family (this visit was more pleasure than research). The wifi in the museum was strong enough for my two companions to quickly download the app. We smiled as we listened to the playful audio [...]
Read MoreIs there anything more luxurious than slowly absorbing a sublime work of art? I can easily forget this. When I visit a new art museum, I can get in a manic state. I don’t want to miss anything, so I am tempted to methodically make my way through every gallery. And by seeing everything, I see nothing. So, when I gave myself three days to retreat in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I made a conscious effort to [...]
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 MoreMontreal’s Château Ramezay has a fuzzy past. The grand house was originally built for Claude de Ramezay, the governor of Montreal from 1703 to 1724. But Ramezay went a little overboard, spending way too much of his own money on the building project. After his widow’s death in 1745, the heirs sold the property to the West Indies Company, which had a monopoly on the export of beaver [...]
Read MoreIf you’ve been following along this month, you know that Imaginibus's museum theme for August is PLAY. Today, I’m excited to (re)introduce you to Nolwenn, a dear friend from Paris and fellow blogger. I sent her a MusEmvelope and asked her to play in a museum. I’ll let Nolwenn take it from here [...]
Read MoreAlexander Hamilton played a major role in my three-day retreat in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As I wrote about here, I was nervous as I approached the Met on the morning of the retreat's first day. I literally started getting panicky as I crossed Central Park, feeling overwhelmed by the vast collection of the Met and worrying that I wouldn’t be able to structure my time well. That’s when [...]
Read MoreAs soon as I read about SFMOMA’s new app, I had an immediate audioguide crush. The app features exciting technology and innovative content. It reimagines what a relevant audio tour experience can be. The app proposes several Immersive Walks, which are 15-45 minute audio “journeys”. These tours are wonderfully creative. You can choose the mood you want for your visit, from the hilarious “I Don’t [...]
Read MoreDo 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 MoreAugust's museum theme is PLAY. My favorite museum memories involve some sense of play. It can be such a great way to appropriate a museum visit and to claim the space as your own. But, as an adult, thinking of ways to play can be a lot of work! I find myself tapping into a childlike energy when I am playful; it makes me think of the quote by Picasso: “Every child is an artist. The problem is [...]
Read MoreIt all started off innocently enough. I was newly engaged, and it was time to design ‘Save the Date’ announcements for our upcoming wedding. I wanted a beautiful image to go behind the text. Luckily, I had just spent an afternoon in the Musée du Louvre’s Department of Islamic Art and my memory was saturated with colorful [...]
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 MoreTechnology and art are inextricably linked. For this month's Creativity Theme, I'll be looking at TECHNOLOGY in art and museums: representations of technology in art, technology used to make art, and, of course, technology used to facilitate the connections between objects and visitors. I am gearing [...]
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 [...]
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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.
Check out my newsletter on Substack to be inspired to see the art in your daily life.
