The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC) will be organizing and touring Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything, the first major exhibition on the great literary songwriter Leonard Cohen.

The aim of this exhibition is to create an immersive, visually compelling and in-depth experience exploring Leonard Cohen’s poetical aesthetics of art and life. Through his music and lyrics, songs and poems, Cohen has attracted a huge global audience and influenced countless artists across all disciplines and generations. The exhibition explores the creative impact of his work on the international arts community by presenting a unique selection of commissioned works and installations by artists from different disciplines all around the world who have been inspired, influenced or otherwise moved by Leonard Cohen.

Beyond the works that will be created especially for A Crack in Everything, the exhibition will also include innovative multimedia environments in which Cohen’s songs will be covered and performed, based on archival material (writings, drawings and recordings) he produced over the past half century.

Canadian poet, novelist, singer and songwriter whose work is renowned worldwide, Leonard Cohen (Montréal 1934 – Los Angeles 2016) remains one of the most fascinating and enigmatic figures of our time. Having attracted a global audience during five decades of writing and music-making, he garnered a cross generational fan base and is revered by younger musicians and artists as a major figure from the 1960s who worked right into the early 21st century. Over the years, Cohen was honoured with countless awards and prizes in many parts of the world: among them the 2010 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2011 Princess of Asturias Award in Spain for literature and the 2012 Glenn Gould Prize in Canada.