The AGQ recently acquired an important addition to the Jean Guilda fonds: photographs, a vinyl record, a CD, periodicals, and an early painting by Guilda, accompanied by a photo of the model.
The archives were donated by Mr. Raynald Bordeleau, who was a friend of the famous female impersonator.
Many thanks to Mr. Bordeleau for this donation.
This October, the Gay Archives of Quebec team welcome V. Samoylenko, who will work with us for the next six months thanks to an Emploi-Québec subsidy. V. Samoylenko has already been working as an assistant archivist for a few days now. In addition to helping Simone Beaudry-Pilotte in her tasks, they will be supporting researchers in their projects.
Having created the exhibit Walls Have Ears in summer 2020 for their internship, V. Samoylenko knows the Gay Archives of Quebec very well, so we are happy to have them back among us.
From the 20th of October until the 14th of November, The Quebec Gay Archives welcome Rachele Borghi, a French researcher, as part of the Programme de coopération franco-québécois, to work on the emotional aspect of archives as well as on rendering visible memories marginalized by dominant discourses.
Her research-creation approach seeks to mobilize memory in the present. With the collaboration of Camilla Penzo, she will seek to understand how to transform past activist experiences into tools of empowerement in our current lives.
For Rachele, the archive is a magical space, a place of interconnectedness between past and present, a marginal space which “offers to one the possibility of radical perspective from which to see and create, to imagine alternatives, new worlds” (bell hooks).
We wish them a very pleasant stay in Montreal.
During the month of October, the AGQ had the opportunity to promote their collections and services to Montreal’s english universities.
On October 5th, Simone Beaudry-Pilotte gave a presentation in Simon-Pierre Lacasse’s Public History course at Concordia University, attented by approximately 40 students.
On October 7th, Pierre Pilotte was present during the vernissage of the Recipe for a Queer Cookbook exhibition, curated by Alex Ketchum at McGill University. Approximately 30 people were present for this event.