Alumni Profile - Marc Mayer

Alumni Profile - Marc Mayer McGill University

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Home > McGill News > 2008 > Fall 2008 > Alumnotes > Alumni Profile - Marc Mayer

Alumni Profile - Marc Mayer

THE ART OF THE HUNT

news

Kate Hutchinson

"There's something going on in Montreal right now, there's a new spirit here. Everyone's talking about it in Canada!" MARC MAYER, BA'84, director of the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, practically radiates with enthusiasm.

Before returning to Montreal in 2004 to take up his position at the MAC, Mayer surveyed Montreal's crop of thirtysomething artists and was duly impressed. "It's not like previous generations of great artists; there's no movement or ism. It's not a conversation among artists; it's a conversation among individuals. That, I think, is the sign of authentic maturity in an arts community, and Montreal has arrived."

Mayer was the deputy director of art at the Brooklyn Museum before arriving at the MAC. "I'm a collector, a public collector, and that's one reason why I came to Montreal. At the Brooklyn Museum I could buy Egyptian art, but I couldn't really buy contemporary art, and that's my strength. I'm by nature a big game hunter!"

Originally from Sudbury, Ontario, Mayer studied art history at McGill in the eighties. He was a baroque architecture buff—until he discovered the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and fell in love with contemporary art. So years later, when he got the call for the top job at the MAC, it seemed too good to pass up. "The sheer poetry of being able to come full circle, having fallen in love with contemporary art here, and pursuing a career in it when all signs were pointing elsewhere, only to end up as the director of the museum where I had that experience, it was just too beautiful." He's made it his personal project to spread the word about the MAC. "I want everyone from coast to coast in Canada to realize there is one museum of contemporary art in Canada that makes a difference to an artist's career: It's this one, and it's in Montreal.

This is the place."

SHELLEY POMERANCE

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