Le silence des agneaux – Sylvain Campeau

[Spring 1996]

This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

 
Summary
On September 23, 1995, Vox Populi, in collaboration with the Musée d’art contemporain, organized a conference entitled “The Presence of Photography in Museum Collections: Specificity of a Medium and a Culture.” In his text “Le silence des agneaux” (The silence of the lambs), Sylvain Campeau gives his impressions of this event.With regard to both discussions between panel members and participation by the audience, Campeau stresses the weaknesses in the concept of “collection” among Canadian institutions and the limits that institutional acquisition committees place on the real choices of curators. Comments by artists present at the conference also shed light on the lack of follow-up in some of these collections. The foreigners on the panel, for their part, shared their vision of the meaning of a collection and the importance for their institutions of the acquisitions they make.