July 12 - August 18, 2001
CORRIDART Revisited

The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery of Concordia University is pleased to present the exhibition CORRIDART Revisited from July 12 to August 18, 2001.

This exhibition marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the demolition of CORRIDART: dans la rue Sherbrooke. This "corridor of art" along Sherbrooke Street was the major project of the Arts and Culture programme for Montreal's 1976 Summer Olympics. The organizer and guiding spirit of the event was the artist Melvin Charney. The presentation was scheduled to be on display from July 7 to 31, along a five-mile route from Atwater Avenue to the Olympic site. Its visual art projects and performance areas created an outdoor linear museum which simultaneously recalled the cultural history of Sherbrooke Street. The presentation was united by the narrative of the scaffolding and panels of MÈmoire de la rue. After only one week, however, the exhibition was ordered destroyed by Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau and his Executive Council in a political act of censorship that has come to overshadow the artwork as well as the ambitions of the exhibition itself.

While the intention of this presentation is to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the demolition of CORRIDART: dans la rue Sherbrooke, it is equally important to celebrate and to remember CORRIDART for what it hoped to accomplish as much as for what was destroyed. Many of the concerns of conceptual and installation art inherent in the CORRIDART projects continue to inform the art of today. The issues of censorship symbolized by CORRIDART's demolition are also a part of the current condition of art.

CORRIDART Revisited is organized by The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery and curated by Sandra Paikowsky, Professor of Art History, in collaboration with Nancy Marrelli, Director of the Concordia University Archives, and a team of Art History and Art Education graduate students. An illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

The exhibition is presented at the Ellen Art Gallery with the assistance of The Canada Council for the Arts, Assistance to Art Museums and Public Galleries for Operations and Programming in Contemporary Art.