At the CCA, our Collection is a source of ongoing conversation—an archive that encourages reflection and new insights. On Friday, 21 February, we invite you to join us for an afternoon with Didier Morelli as he leads a small group through a thoughtfully curated selection of objects from the Collection. Each of these objects tells its own story, offering a unique perspective on architecture and design. Didier’s selections will reveal how, when viewed together, they inspire fresh ideas and deepen our understanding of the field.

This thematic session will focus on the relationship between sports and architecture, leisure and the built environment, and games and the places that structure them. Specifically, it employs the CCA Collection to see how athletics and play, from the birth of the modern Olympic movement in the late nineteenth century to the rise of 1980s skateboarding counterculture into a mainstream sport in the twenty-first century, have contributed to and determined the shaping of cities, the transformation of the countryside, and the establishment of public policy pertaining to urban development and gentrification. Using an intersectional approach to draw connections between models for the 1936 Olympic complex in Germany, sketches of Le Corbusier’s unrealized Olympic Stadium for Baghdad in the 1950s, and holdings cataloguing the unfolding of Roger Taillibert’s now-iconically-controversial Montreal Olympic Stadium for the 1976 Games and its legacy since then, the session will connect past and present sporting events and activities as sites of complex and conflicting power relations, social dynamics, and monumental visionary architecture.

This event will be held in English. It will take place in the Study Room and is free of charge, but space is limited, so RSVP is required. Admission to the museum is included with your registration. We look forward to welcoming you to this thoughtful and enriching experience.

If you have any questions, please contact 514-939-7002 or write to public@cca.qc.ca

Didier Morelli is a curator, performance and art historian, cultural critic and visual artist. His Fonds de recherche du Québec—Société et culture (FRQSC) Postdoctoral Fellowship, which he holds at Concordia University and the CCA examines how second-wave feminist performances subverted urban functionalism by imagining alternate modes of embodiment in Montreal and Toronto during the 1970s. Previously the associate editor at Espace art actuel, his writing has also been published in Art Journal, CTR: Canadian Theatre Review, C Magazine,CBC Arts, Esse Arts + Opinions, RACAR, Spirale, and TDR: The Drama Review. Morelli will be the curator of the 2026 MANIF, the Quebec City Biennial, which is titled “Briser la glace / Splitting Ice.”