Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal presents

The virtual exhibition

Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything

After the monumental success of the exhibition Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything, inaugurated at the MAC in 2017, the Musée has the great pleasure to launch the virtual exhibition of the same name. Inspired by the original, the virtual exhibition Leonard Cohen : A Crack in Everything stands apart from the one shown in the Museum. This rich presentation includes some fifty works from the MAC collection in addition to bringing together the works and songs from the original exhibition, which the public so enjoyed and loved.

Fully bilingual and accessible, the exhibition is freely available online for three years (until June 25th, 2024) in Canada only.

With this virtual exhibition, the MAC offers visitors a timeless moment by immersing themselves in the unique universe of the great Leonard Cohen, seen through the lens of contemporary art. A unique opportunity to see again the outstanding pieces of the original exhibition, while further discovering the extent, diversity and relevance of the works in the MAC collection.

Discovering contemporary art while exploring the world of Leonard Cohen

A formidable audiovisual immersion, the virtual exhibition explores the universal aspect of Cohen’s predominant themes that illuminated his poetry and vast musical repertoire, while uncovering the many links that can be drawn with contemporary art.

The exhibition is divided into four main themes omnipresent in Cohen’s body of work: Poetic Thought, Spirituality & Humility, Love and Loss & Longing. Visitors can chart their own online journey, choosing to enjoy the show’s abundant documentary resources either by heading to the Explore section, or by selecting individual works or artists in the Gallery section. Each section offers the viewer an alternative access to the exhibition’s vast content, some of which is unique to this online edition: hundreds of images, audio and video extracts, artists’ quotes and biographies, as well as songs, interviews, poems and self-portraits by Cohen.

Giving the audience a voice

The exhibition underscores the evocative and extensive power of the spoken and written word in Cohen’s work. To this end, the section Echo gathers the personal accounts and firsthand reactions of the audience, collated in audio and written format. Indeed, the MAC invites the public to continue sharing their impressions on social media using the hashtag #cohenetmoi.

Finally, the section Context offers the viewer a presentation of the virtual exhibition itself, an introduction to its main themes and artists, as well as ten pivotal biographical moments in the life of Leonard Cohen.

www.macm.org