The day started with a gorgeous sunrise, I’m so glad I was up to witness it.
I borrowed Nina’s car to venture into Sherbrooke. It was pouring again so a good day to check out some of the museums in town. My first stop was the musée des beaux-arts (fine art museum). Outside was a huge metal sculpture of a rooster. They were in the middle of installing two new exhibits so the only one available to view was the permanent exhibit on colors. Because of that it was free admission which was fine for me. Though a relatively small exhibit it has some great pieces. I also loved how they had specific information for kids to encourage them to check out the art (the description called them ‘small fry’). One suggested they pose like the women in the paintings. There was a neat series of three sculptures made out of tissue entitled Sophia’s Daughters -The Three Graces. One was Faith, another Hope and the last, Charity.
My favorite exhibit was one made up of various parts of an artist’s house that had caught on fire, the museum had all of the pieces that did not go up in flames and used them to create a stylized room.
Downstairs was a boutique with various art pieces for sale, framed poetry and cool collage paintings of famous women.
Next I checked out the Sherbrooke History Museum. It was not as interesting as the art museum, and relatively expensive to get into, $22 Canadian, but I wanted to support the local economy and learn a little bit more about Sherbrooke’s History. A small group of Americans essentially settled the area as not many first nations people were in the area. Eventually a good amount of industry built up, as well as several hospitals. Now it is quite an educational hub, with both French and English universities anchoring the local economy.
I saw some other great sights – a burning man type vehicle, an old school bar ‘The Black Cat’ with some interesting performers/theme nights and a networking company called ‘Hedhofis’, basically how the French would say Head Office.
