Comprehensive Study Notes: Curatorial Practice and the 'From Pépinot to PAW Patrol' Exhibition
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Guest Speaker Profile:
Speaker: Doctor Arikotek, professional historian and curator.
Doctoral Dissertation: Canada's People's Story (Canada People's Story), completed during graduate studies alongside Professor Alexandre and published as a book in 2014.
Institutional Career: Joined the Canadian Museum of History in 2015 as the Curator for Media and Communications.
Major Exhibition: Curated From Pépinot to PAW Patrol: Television of Our Childhood (ran September 2, 2022 – September 1, 2023).
Institutional History and Mandate of the Canadian Museum of History
Chronological Evolution of the Institution:
1856: Founded initially as the Geological Survey of Canada.
1927: Reconstituted as the National Museum of Canada.
1968: Reorganized into the National Museum of Man.
1986: Renamed the Canadian Museum of Civilization upon moving to its current location in Gatineau, Quebec.
2013: Renamed the Canadian Museum of History under the federal Conservative government.
Shifts in Curatorial Mandate:
Name changes reflect fundamental shifts in institutional priorities.
The focus transitioned from an anthropological and archaeological orientation toward a comprehensive Canadian national history mandate.
While the museum retains anthropologists and archaeologists on staff and engages in the repatriation of Indigenous collections, general Canadian historical narratives form the core focus.
Canadian History Hall: Opened in 2017 as the museum's flagship permanent exhibition.
Corporate Structure, Staffing, and Visitation:
Operates as a federal Crown Corporation encompassing the Canadian Museum of History, the Canadian War Museum, and the Virtual Museum of Canada.
Staffing levels dropped from approximately 400 employees to roughly 330 following major institutional budget cuts in January.
Historically the most visited museum in Canada; attendance is rebounding toward pre-COVID figures.
Expected attendance growth is supported by federal initiatives such as the Canada Strong Pass, granting free museum admission to individuals aged 25 and under.
The Curatorial Role in Media, Communications, and Material Culture
Evolution of the Media Portfolio:
The museum formerly housed the Canadian Postal Museum, supported by an autonomous team of 10 staff members managing acquisitions and exhibitions until its closure around 2013.
Following its dissolution, the entire postal history mandate was consolidated into a single curatorial position.
The current curatorial scope expanded beyond postal history to encompass communications technology, broadcasting, and media: television, radio, telephony, and computers.
Artifact Acquisition Realities:
Between and of unsolicited acquisition offers from the public are declined.
Donations are frequently misconstrued as garage-sale transactions, lacking historical rigor.
Institutional criteria require strict alignment with curatorial mandates, high physical integrity, and substantive provenance (the narrative, context, and human usage surrounding the object).
Comparative Example: A pristine 1950s television set with no contextual documentation has low curatorial value compared to a worn television accompanied by rich family documentation illustrating social viewing rituals in a domestic living room.
Proactive Acquisitions: Curators actively solicit partnerships with active cultural productions, such as pursuing acquisitions with the CBC satirical program This Hour Has 22 Minutes.
The Curator as Academic and Cultural Mediator:
Combines traditional academic scholarship (conducting university-level research, publishing peer-reviewed journal articles, participating in historical associations, leading oral history projects) with public cultural mediation.
Direct public mediation duties include designing physical exhibitions, writing public-facing blogs, conducting broadcast media interviews, and leading specialized VIP tours.
Exhibition Development: Timeline, Constraints, and Production Team
Project Lifecycle:
Major museum exhibitions require a planning and development horizon of 3 to 4 years prior to public opening.
August 2018: Initial ideation for a children's television exhibition.
Fall 2019: Formal project approval granted by senior institutional management after months of feasibility review.
November 2019: Core exhibition team assembled.
March 2020: COVID-19 pandemic forced all physical collaboration, design boards, and brainstorming to pivot entirely to remote work via Microsoft Teams, creating severe technical and logistical challenges.
September 2, 2022: Official public opening.
September 1, 2023: Exhibition closed (strictly 364 days due to legal copyright terms).
The Exhibition Core Team:
Curator (1 individual): Subject-matter expert responsible for research, intellectual framing, object selection, textual narratives, and media vetting; acts as a critical single point of failure.
Project Managers (4 across the project lifecycle): Enforced production schedules, deliverables, and operational budgets.
Media Producer: Managed audiovisual rights, filming, editing, and screen productions.
Exhibition Designers: Designed spatial layout, architectural flow, environmental lighting, and graphic display panels.
Museum Studies Specialists / Creative Developers / Museologists (2 individuals): Optimized visitor experience, cognitive load, narrative readability, and physical/auditory accessibility.
Museum Mediation versus Academic Historiography
Textual and Visual Reductionism:
Academic history operates with expansive word limits (e.g., a 100,000-word monograph), whereas museum mediation demands extreme concision to accommodate visitor reading behaviors.
Illustrative Example: In the permanent Canadian History Hall, a curator was allocated a strict limit of 70 words to synthesize the entirety of the Korean War.
Institutional accessibility policies set strict caps on textual density; institutions like the McCord Museum in Montreal permit higher word counts by comparison.
Audiovisual segments must be condensed into short runtimes to match limited visitor attention spans.
Bilingual, Pan-Canadian, and Cultural Mandates:
Federal Crown Corporation status mandates full English-French bilingualism across all display surfaces and digital outputs.
Exhibits must reflect regional, linguistic, and intercultural diversity.
Content breakdown for From Pépinot to PAW Patrol:
English-language programming.
French Québécois programming (reflecting high production volumes and the National Capital Region demographic).
Indigenous programming.
Decolonizing Methodologies and Indigenous Collaboration:
Direct collaboration with Indigenous partners, including the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation and Mohawk producer Marion de la Orange (who produced children's television programming in Kahnawake, south of Montreal).
Relinquished curatorial voice in sensitive thematic zones; Indigenous partners scripted, reviewed, and appeared on screen in mini-documentaries addressing historical racism, stereotyping, and cultural exclusion.
Copyright, Performers' Rights, and Financial Realities:
Screen media requires complex, highly costly intellectual property negotiations.
Licensing fees must be paid to multiple rights-holders: actors/comedians on screen, musicians, composers, puppeteers, and production corporations.
High copyright costs strictly limited the exhibition run to exactly 364 days (under 1 calendar year).
Spatial Layout and Interpretive Zones of the Exhibition
Exhibition Scale and Architectural Footprint:
Encompassed over 1,000 square meters (approximately 10,000 square feet) within the museum's largest temporary exhibition gallery.
Exhibited 80 physical artifacts and 65 minutes of audiovisual materials representing 100 television programs spanning 70 years of Canadian broadcasting.
Curatorial thesis: "There is a little bit of you, me, and us in children's television programming"—reflecting individual nostalgia ("me"), shared familial or social connections ("you"), and broader national values ("us").
Zone 1: The Entrance Corridor & Introduction:
High-energy, visually dynamic entryway designed to transition visitors into the world of television.
Visitors physically walked through a giant television frame into the gallery space.
Intro video integrated signature montage clips across 7 decades of French, English, and Indigenous broadcasting, including PAW Patrol and Pépinot.
Zone 2: The Learning Zone (The Domestic Cubes):
Divided into distinct architectural cubes representing domestic spaces where television is consumed: the living room, the kitchen, and the basement.
Videos projected onto the ceilings/upper surfaces of the cubes explored core developmental themes (such as cooperative teamwork) across generations.
Structured to prompt spontaneous multi-generational dialogue among children, parents, and grandparents.
Zone 3: Program Highlights (Must-See Programs):
Transitioned from thematic domesticity to program-specific showcases.
Featured major Canadian cultural cornerstones: The Friendly Giant, Mr. Dressup, Degrassi (representing adolescent television), and PAW Patrol.
Interactive small-screen consoles allowed visitors to actively select and play archival program excerpts.
Zone 4: The Imagination Carousel (Caboussel):
A fully immersive, 360-degree cylindrical projection chamber.
Visitors stood in the center of an environment exploring creative and surreal concepts from 70 years of broadcast history.
Framed archival television clips not merely as media illustrations, but as historical artifacts in their own right.
Zone 5: The Values Zone (Historical and Critical Perspectives):
Shifted tone from nostalgic celebration to critical academic analysis.
Featured dedicated mini-documentaries examining social issues: racism, Indigenous representation, gender dynamics, and unique characteristics of Quebec television.
Addressed systemic issues through direct first-person testimonies; for example, an actress from Mr. Dressup recounted breaking gender barriers in the 1970s by being cast as a female postal delivery worker rather than a traditional "mailman".
Zone 6 & 7: Culmination and Conclusion:
Concluded the chronological and thematic journey, reinforcing children's television as an evolving mirror of collective Canadian social values.
Exhibition Research, Production Artifacts, and Permanent Legacy
Underlying Research Infrastructure:
The curator developed an exhaustive internal database cataloging 306 individual episodes, 100 television series, and 50 discrete pedagogical/social themes.
Drafted an initial master exhibition script totaling 14,000 words, which was subsequently edited, rewritten, and translated.
Supervised the selection, storyboarding, rights clearance, and editing of 33 discrete audiovisual productions.
Artifact Tracking and Conservation:
Over of objects displayed were external loans from private individuals, producers, and institutions, requiring extensive provenance tracking.
Unsuccessful searches: The cat puppet from the Quebec City children's program Félix et Ciboulette could not be located despite contacting extensive networks.
Mr. Dressup Treehouse Conservation: Supervised the historical research and physical restoration of the original treehouse set from the early 1960s (one of only two ever built) in collaboration with museum conservators and preparators.
Post-Exhibition Outputs and Permanent Additions:
Publications: Authored a 120-page full exhibition catalog and submitted an academic, peer-reviewed journal article focusing on Indigenous children's television programming.
Public Dissemination: Hosted evening meet-and-greet events, organized public Family Days, authored bilingual process blogs, and completed over 15 major media interviews (CBC, Radio-Canada, CTV, regional radio).
Permanent Collection Acquisitions: Built institutional trust with lenders during exhibition production, securing foundational material culture artifacts for the permanent National Collection:
Original costumes from Cornemuse, a major late-1990s/early-2000s Quebec children's series, donated via actor Daniel Proux.
The original surviving puppets from Pépinot et Capucine (Pépinot), Canada's first children's television show, which debuted in September 1952.
Comparative Curatorial Projects
Outdoor Plaza Exhibition (Le Canada et…):
An outdoor photographic exhibition erected on the exterior plaza of the Canadian Museum of History.
Composed of approximately 30 large-scale display panels using high-impact visual history to explore themes from the 19th century to the 21st century.
Lucy Maud Montgomery Post Office Exhibition (Cavendish, Prince Edward Island):
Curated for the historic Cavendish post office, operating under the museum's postal history mandate.
Focused on the postal history of PEI and Montgomery's real-life role as postmistress while working in her aunt and uncle's post office.
Redesigned visual panels and spatial displays to enhance readability, aesthetics, and visitor engagement (distinct from the nearby Parks Canada National Historic Site).
Canadian History Hall (2017 Permanent Installation):
Co-curated the final exhibition zone exploring modern Canada's international commitments, diplomacy, and global affairs.
Turnkey Exhibition Adaptation (McCord Museum Collaboration):
Incoming traveling exhibition from Montreal's McCord Museum requiring spatial adaptation to the Canadian Museum of History.
Demonstrates the friction of "turnkey" projects: modifying layout geometries, retrofitting display cases (e.g., adapting an exhibition designed without glass cases into an institutional gallery requiring them), and managing artifact availability shifts.
Questions & Discussion
VIP Guided Tours:
Participant Inquiry (Professor Alexandre): Clarification on the nature and categories of "VIP" visitors hosted by curators.
Response: The National Capital Region environment generates diverse institutional VIP tour requests directed to curators for their subject expertise. Categories include:
Professional associations (e.g., visiting delegations of professional archivists).
Government departments (e.g., specialized tours conducted for the Department of National Defence).
Diplomatic delegations and foreign embassies (e.g., German Embassy officials organizing high-profile tours).
Dignitaries, foreign heads of state, and royalty (e.g., visits by King Charles III or visiting international prime ministers).
The museum's Board of Trustees seeking behind-the-scenes insights into research and exhibition design.
Museum guides typically handle standard school groups and general public tours, whereas curators manage specialized, institutional, and state delegations.
Traveling Exhibitions, Copyright Restrictions, and Costs:
Participant Inquiry (Lisa): Inquiries regarding whether major exhibitions are designed to tour other institutions after closing or remain "one-and-done," and the operational impact of the 364-day copyright term.
Response: Touring major exhibitions is ideal but constrained by legal and technical hurdles. For From Pépinot to PAW Patrol, extending the run beyond 364 days was cost-prohibitive due to escalating copyright and performer royalties. An exhibition of this scale ( / ) requires an importing venue with identical gallery dimensions; spatial discrepancies force redesigns and artifact drops. A serious proposal to travel the exhibition to Toronto was negotiated but ultimately collapsed. The museum produces two distinct exhibition models: large-scale "blockbusters" (heavily designed, highly technical, high-budget, difficult to tour) and dedicated traveling exhibits (modular, lightweight, panel-and-case based, engineered specifically for transit and revenue generation).
Anecdote (Lisa): Referenced an immersive children's sensory exhibit in California entered through a giant human nostril, which turned out to be a traveling production designed by Science North in Sudbury, Ontario.
Visitor Reception and Cultural Divergence (The "Two Solitudes"):
Participant Inquiry (Professor Alexandre): Inquiries into whether French- and English-speaking visitors crossed cultural lines to engage with unfamiliar programming or remained in their respective cultural silos.
Response: Formal post-exhibition exit surveys were unfortunately not conducted, leaving visitor metrics reliant on qualitative feedback. The exhibition was explicitly framed as an intercultural learning experience where roughly half the content would be novel to any single visitor. Broadcast production funding in Canada is divided nearly evenly between English and French networks, justifying a balanced English and French split. Positive reception was observed among bicultural families and intercultural couples introducing their partners to their childhood cultural touchstones. In the Ottawa-Gatineau region, Franco-Ontarian visitors uniquely recognized both French and English programs, having grown up watching both Mr. Dressup and Pépinot. Curators must design exhibits across multiple visitor profiles simultaneously: intellectual "history buffs" who read every label, parents managing small children, artifact-driven visitors, and immersive experience-driven visitors.
Exhibition Ideation, Research Strategy, and Institutional Pitching:
Participant Inquiry (Chat Question): How curators sequence research and exhibit pitching, and at what point in the development process they can be confident an idea will succeed.
Response: Research and exhibition pitching operate in tandem rather than strictly sequentially. A curator balances three distinct plans: a research plan, an artifact acquisition plan, and an exhibition proposal. For example, during an ongoing oral history research project investigating personal communications (post, telephone, computers) over the last 80 years, an initial exhibition proposal was rejected by senior management. The curator continued conducting interviews and acquiring vintage telephones regardless. When an exhibit proposal is declined, the curator reframes the conceptual angle to better align with institutional scheduling, gallery availability, and budget priorities. By maintaining an active research project, any collected interviews and acquired artifacts feed directly into future institutional archives and scholarship even if an exhibition proposal is delayed or canceled.
Student Research Assistant Opportunities in Museum Settings:
Participant Inquiry (Professor Alexandre): Guidance for university students seeking research assistantships or entry pathways into the Canadian Museum of History and related cultural heritage institutions.
Response: Curators hire university students directly as research assistants on fixed-term, task-based contracts (e.g., a contract for 100 hours of research). Because contracts under specific financial thresholds are not posted publicly on corporate job portals, hiring is conducted through academic networks and professor recommendations. Tasks include vetting oral history interview transcriptions, conducting regional archival research, and performing artifact inventories. Positions can frequently be conducted remotely. Key qualifications include bilingualism (French and English) and historical research sensitivity. The curator noted that their own professional entry into the Canadian Museum of History began in 2008 through an informal student research assistant contract.