Collections and Research
Conferences and Symposia
Upcoming symposia
Symposium – Costume Balls
March 20 and 21, 2025
The McCord Stewart Museum Team invites you to a two-day event bringing together a wide range of approaches to the unparalleled material and visual legacy featured in the exhibition Costume Balls: Dressing Up History, 1870-1927. The symposium will share new learning derived from the full spectrum of the process of creating the exhibition, from the slow curatorial process of identification and analysis of the extant garments and visual culture, through the subsequent rethinking of our objectives for conservation interventions through a series of talks*, exhibition tours and behind-the-scenes.
Registration opens on February 4, 2025. Detailed schedule coming soon.
*Presentations in French or in English (simultaneous translation online)
Past symposia
McCord Stewart Discoveries
Half-Day Conference | Friday, March 22, 2024
The Museum’s experts present the research projects they’ve been working on and share their recent discoveries related to the Museum’s collections and archives.
The event is geared towards an academic audience as well as anyone interested in history and archives, museum studies, or material culture.
- James Duncan: Art correspondent for The Illustrated London News
Presentation in French by Christian Vachon, Head, Collections Management and Curator, Documentary Art. - Uncovering emotions in the archives: The Shared Emotions project
Presentation in French by Mathieu Lapointe, Curator, Archives. - The Curious Case of the Kul-e-Tuk Parka: Appropriation of an Inuit Garment
Presentation in English by Alexis Walker, Associate Curator, Dress, Fashion and Textiles. - Threads of Black Emancipation in an Eighteenth-Century Dress
Presentation in English by Cynthia Cooper, Head, Collections and Research; Curator, Dress, Fashion and Textiles
International Symposium – Around Wampum: Histories and Perspectives
Wednesday, February 22 and Friday, February 23, 2024
Capitalizing on the unprecedented interest generated by Wampum: Beads of Diplomacy, the Museum organized a symposium devoted to these unique cultural objects, bringing together a dozen Indigenous, Quebecois, Canadian and international specialists.
Detailed programming: Around Wampum: Histories and Perspectives
- Watch day 1
This recording includes the talks and the three panels from February 22, 2024. - Watch day 2
This recording includes the talks and the three panels from February 23, 2024.
Past conferences, colloquia and symposia
2020 - 2023
- McCord Stewart Discoveries | Half-Day Conference
March 2023- Wampum Belts at the McCord Stewart Museum: History, Meaning, Identification
- Weaving Art into Function: Northern Northwest Coast Basketry
- The Photographer’s Vacation: Brian Merrett’s Europe 72 Series
- Women’s Tailoring in Montreal in the Late 19th Century
Watch the conference recording
2010 - 2019
- Collecting Knowledge: New Dialogues on McCord Museum Collections
November 2013
See the event page - From New France to the Province of Quebec (1754-1776)
September 2010
Download the program - Montreal Jewish Life: The Thirties and Forties
April 2010
Download the program
2003 - 2009
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- Bodies on Display
November 2008
Download the program - The Golden Mountain: Canada and China, Interconnected
November 2007
Download the program - Images of Society, Variable Trajectories
September 2007
Download the program - Trading Places: Commerce and the Evolution of the City
November 2006
Download the program - Antoine Plamondon: The Full Portrait
November 2006
Download the program - The Abstract Edge
Robert Davidson and Contemporary Aboriginal Arts Practice
May 2006
Download the program - Picturing Her: Images of Girlhood
December 2005
Download the program - What’s for Dinner? The Daily Meal Through History
November 2005
Download the program - Comparative and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Child Health in the 20th Century
October 2004
Download the program
- Bodies on Display
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