Showing posts with label
Canadian Museum of Civilization.
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Showing posts with label
Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Show all posts
The stunning artifact above is featured in Vodou, a magnificent exhition that will close at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, on February 23, 2014.
I have seen it twice and I hope to see it again and again before it leaves town. Ça vaut vraiment le déplacement. Here's one review. Entrance to the CMC is free on Thursdays after 5pm, and that includes Vodou.
If CPC Harper government is dumbing down the Canadian Museum of Civilization, it might also turn its laser-like gaze to other cultural institutions that it can defile and degrade to please its political base.
New Democrat and Liberal critics are saying, however, that the museum’s renaming is part of a larger, very deliberate effort by the Harper government to put a Conservative stamp on every symbol of the country. Since Harper came to power, lavish attention and money have been splashed on everything to do with the monarchy and the military in particular.
NDP heritage critic Andrew Cash said the Conservatives are throwing money at the museum while they cutting federal library and archive budgets — “robbing Peter to pay Paul” — and paying more attention to displays of history than the preservation of it.
Cash also pointed out that Moore has not been reticent about his displeasure over cultural exhibits in Ottawa, such as last year’s sex education exhibit at the science museum. He said it is hard to believe that the minister wouldn’t actively try to shape this museum according to Conservatives’ likes and dislikes.
The source for the cash flow that will turn the crank of Reformatory Can-CON History has been revealed.
Canada's 150th birthday is being brought to you by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
The federal Museum of Civilization has announced it is teaming up with the oil industry lobby group as an official sponsor of its exhibits to mark 150 years since Confederation in 2015.
The $1-million, five-year sponsorship is the largest ever for the Museum of Civilization.
Dave Collyer, president of the petroleum producers' lobby group, says the goal of the exercise is to promote his industry by engaging and communicating with the public.
The president and CEO of the taxpayer-funded museum, Mark O'Neill, says such sponsorships are going to become more common in future as flat government funding fails to keep up with the rising costs of exhibitions.
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and Imperial Oil ran into controversy in 2011 when they sponsored exhibits at the federal Museum of Science and Technology and documents later showed they had exerted pressure to alter exhibit content they felt treated the industry too harshly.
The change of focus, from civilization to history is viewed with concern by some. And now it's obvious why.
From the CPC government that created a testerical brouhaha around Canada's Arctic sovereignty to justify the purchase of F-35 fighter planes, we now have the CON rebranding of the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Yesterday, Heritage Minister James Moore announced that the name and mandate of the Canadian Museum of Civilization will be changed to create the Canadian Museum of History. $25 million will be moved from other areas of the Heritage budget to pay for the new museum.
“This decision is a mistake,” said James L. Turk, CAUT executive director. “It needlessly eliminates Canada’s largest and most popular museum. While some of the current museum will be incorporated in the new Canadian history museum, it will not include the mammoth Canada Hall which is the largest and finest social history display in the world.”
According to Turk, the government had numerous locations in the National Capital Region to house a new Canadian history museum without closing the Canadian Museum of Civilization whose mandate is to increase, throughout Canada and internationally, knowledge, critical understanding and appreciation for human cultural achievements.
“This is a government that has done so much to undermine Canadians’ ability to know our past. For example, it has made serious cuts to Library and Archives Canada, which is responsible for acquiring and maintaining Canada’s cultural heritage, and to Parks Canada which maintains 167 Canadian historical sites,” said Turk.
Turk also expressed concern about the federal government’s revisions of Canadian history to fit its ideological agenda, such as its rewriting of the new immigrant study guide in 2010 and its misleading depiction of the War of 1812.
From here. I expect that that PMSHithead's Politburo aka the PMO will be shortly providing MPs with speaking points for the purpose of discrediting universities, professors and knowledge, in retaliation response to this remonstrance.
The Harper government now has quite the history of tampering with organizations such as museums in response to corporate lobbying or its Reform special interest religious groups. Taking over a complete facility to propagate its lies is consequent.
Meanwhile in Québec, the Charbonneau Commission inquiry into corruption with regard to the construction industry disgorges information and exposes practices that suggest corruption at the municipal, provincial and possibly federal level of political government. I posted about these CON players.
Josée Legault has produced a powerful in-depth analysis, drawing lines between the *dots* that are Matricule 728, Charest's intemperate and deliberate obfuscations regarding the university students' call for a general strike, the demonstrations, the strategic deployment of the Service de protection de la ville de Montréal and to a lesser extent, the police force in Québec to suppress civilian dissent, and provincial politics.
Legault called out the Premier on his deliberate use of the word "boycott" to diminish and discredit a general strike that kept growing and gathering strength as it became the way that ordinary citizens could express their anger against the alleged corruption of the Liberal government.
When constable 728 calls the artists she brutalized and arrested "rats", "shit-eaters", "assholes" and "worthless", she simultaneously uses the term "godammed red squares". This detail is not trivial. The reference to "red squares" caused the director of the Montreal police, when he publicly apologized for the events of those Oct. 2 arrests, to specifically address "political profiling."
Was the police mention of "red squares" accidental?
In fact, this reference echoes the political discourse held by Premier Jean Charest and several of his ministers during the "Printemps érable." His spin on the general strike was fully embraced and repeated on several forums by media commentators; more populist voices have not hesitated to add worse insults.
For months, versions of Charest's discourse was everywhere. The equation that emerged was as simplistic as it was false: greedy children + violence + bullying + Communism + left + anarchism + Montreal = anarchist student strike.
The political spin was the product of the Charest government's strategy in this conflict. This tactic was to try to win points with voters since a general election was foreseen this year. In April, I identified this opportunism as a classic case of political division and polarization for electoral purposes.
The choice of this strategy came at the price of a marked deterioration of the political discourse in Quebec.
Rather than defend its policy of raising tuition with rational arguments, the Premier and his ministers attached the terms "violence and intimidation" to a student movement that was mainly peaceful.
I translated the above excerpts; I suggest that you read the full version of her blog posts, parts 1 and 2. Legault is rigorous in her overview; she reaches back to the 1960s and 70s to recall the escalation of state violence and the abuse of political and legal procedures by the authorities.
I think that Harper is preparing to use such strategies and that his government is judiciously organizing the means to curtail any democratic opposition to his corporate agenda, with totalitarian measures if necessary.
And, in case we forget the *ghosts* of corruption past ...
