Arcmtl

Established in 1998 with a dual mandate for promoting and preserving independent culture, ARCMTL has become an integral player in Montreal's cultural milieu. Its flagship small-press fair, Expozine, showcases print publications of all kinds-books, graphic novels, zines, and more. Now in its nineteenth year, Expozine boasts some 270 vendors and 15,0... 00 visitors, and is among the best-known events of its kind worldwide. In 2018, ARCMTL launched Volume MTL, the city's first annual fair and conference dedicated entirely to art books. The organization is also a founding partner of the Montreal Printed Art Festival. As part of this festival, ARCMTL organizes the annual GRANDE Print Art Fair, a gathering of more than 50 artists and organizations from Montreal's printmaking and poster art community. ARCMTL's Distroboto initiative, a unique network of small-artwork vending machines, was featured in the New York Times as an "Idea of the Year" upon its début. ARCMTL also maintains a substantial archive of Montreal history, of Canadian literary and artistic publications, music and spoken-word recordings, oral histories, audio-visual documents, prints, artworks, and various ephemera. The organization's archive centre, located in Montreal's "Mile Ex" neighbourhood, sees intensive use by artists, curators, academic and heritage researchers, and others. ARCMTL prioritizes digitization to preserve and ensure access to fragile or rare items, and media nearing obsolescence, such as magnetic audio-visual reels, cassettes, and videotapes. More and more, digitization is essential both to preserve materials for posterity and to ensure that the collection serves the widest possible public. Among local heritage organizations, ARCMTL is a digitization pioneer, with established, effective workflows and procedures for digitizing cultural artifacts, and a wide range of these materials available online through various platforms. In the twenty years since its establishment, ARCMTL has helped grow Montreal's cultural community and ...Read More