Opening Keynote Lecture: The Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson – Leonard Cohen As I Knew Him

By turns a poet, novelist, songwriter, singer and even Buddhist monk, Leonard Cohen left behind a protean body of work, spanning more than six decades, that has continually fascinated audiences and for many remains a source of inspiration today.

For the twelfth Max and Iris Stern International Symposium, a gathering of cultural historians and museum professionals will present the latest research on the life and work of this seminal artist, while also investigating the dialogue between Cohen’s aesthetic legacy and contemporary art, as addressed in the exhibition Une brèche en toute chose / A Crack in Everything. 

The discussions will further tackle the broader issue of the links that have been drawn between pop music and contemporary art in other recent exhibitions, and examine the challenges this phenomenon poses for museology (dialogues between disciplines, genres and media, audience representation, institutional economics, new technologies and mediation of content)