The best art galleries in Montreal right now

Short for Pierre-François Ouellette Art Contemporain, this commercial gallery on Rachel Street near La Fontaine Park is active at art fairs all over the world. It’s a modestly sized space with top-notch curation. PFOAC’s artists’ list is museum-level in quality, and in fact has helped feed many Canadian museums’ collections with works by the likes of Adad Hannah, Dil Hilderbrand, Karilee Fuglem and August Klintberg. PFOAC’s specialty is spotting art that combines aesthetic appeal with thought-provoking depth.

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One of the largest commercial galleries in the city, set over three storeys on St-Hubert Street in Rosemont, Art Mûr began as a modest framer. They still offer framing services to the pros, but now their central focus is on curating and representing Montreal artists all over the world, including at the Venice Biennale. Come here to discover the work of many artists at once, with either group exhibitions or many solos at once, ranging from established master to new name on the scene. If there's an editorial throughline it’s “playful”.

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Set in one of the now-beautifully renovated industrial buildings of the now-bougie Mile End, Centre Clark has had its space onsite since these buildings were filled with dusty punks playing loud music in crappy loft spaces (i.e. a mere decade ago). The spirit of experimentation and revolutionary thinking somehow still lives on in this unique artist-run centre, despite the absence of cracks in the walls. The artist-members have in common a desire to create change through art and, quite often, wit. Their opening parties are legendary.

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Right by Centre Clark in Mile End, Dazibao is a non-profit organization that produces culture that comments on current social issues, which includes exhibitions, publications, films, residencies and more. It’s a hyperactive intellectual hub with a focus on art by Canadian artists, but also curators, critics, researchers and more — a big part of their M.O. is thought leadership. Past shows have featured Anne-Renée Hotte, Abbas Akhavan and the collective Art of Research.

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This Mile End artist-run contemporary art centre is 50-plus years old. Already! Time flies when you’re pushing the envelope of cultural production, which Optica has done consistently throughout its various eras. Today it’s a space where you’ll discover a diverse array of art, with current issues always at the forefront, from feminism to human rights, and a focus on group exhibitions, workshops, thought-provoking publications and artist residencies.

Photography is celebrated by this artist-run centre just doors away from Optica and Dazibao, but not exclusively — you’ll find all sorts of media exhibited here too in their effort to represent fresh artistic perspectives, but also to weave the past into the present. It’s a great place to get a sense of Quebec art history in small snippets, with great names in the field including Michel Campeau, Thomas Bouquin and Ewa Monika Zebrowski.

A very pretty space on St-Laurent Boulevard, at the tip of Little Italy, COA is a gallery that strives to exhibit new art and art by outsiders, or people who may typically be excluded from the traditional art world because of physical or intellectual diversity. The result is a space where the art is always a treat to discover. It’s a small space that presents solo exhibitions, giving the artists space to express their vision undisturbed. Stop in on your way to a meal at Pastaga, a few doors down.

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This university gallery goes well beyond the educational, with astute programming that includes lectures, publications and art by always-interesting artists including, in the past, Shary Boyle, David Altmejd, Françoise Sullivan and Michael Snow. The gallery is active on a global scale, with frequent participations in art fairs, and has been known to put on cool performative events during festivals.

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These two spaces are at Concordia University: the Ellen is the institutional gallery, with its own curation focused on the confluence of cultural diversity and creative research, with a focus on the university’s material collection, while the FOFA is the gallery dedicated to art by the faculty of Fine Arts. Located in the EV Building, right on bustling Ste-Catherine Street, it’s a good place to go for fresh art perspectives which in the past have included work by Philomène Longpré, Evergon and Marisa Portolese.

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This rickety old five-storey loft building downtown became an enclave for art galleries a couple of decades ago because the rents were affordable and the location was central. Some mainstays absolutely not to be missed on your trip there include commercial gallery Patel Brown, focused on representing alternative perspectives and talents; Circa, an artist-run centre dedicated to sculptural works; Galerie Hughes Charbonneau, for fantastic artists including David Lafrance, Shuvinai Ashoona and Karen Tam; as well as Galerie B-312, SBC, McBride Contemporain and Bellemare Lambert.

Easily the best privately owned art space in the city, Phi Centre main exhibition space is a completely renovated historic four-storey building in Old Montreal that is itself an aesthetic accomplishment. Dedicated mainly to virtual reality installations, performances of all sorts and solo exhibitions by international art stars (including Yayoi Kusama, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Shirin Neshat and Christian Marclay over the years), the Phi Centre keeps Montreal connected to the goings-on of the contemporary art world with trend-setting timeliness.

This stylish non-profit contemporary artist-run centre is dedicated to Indigenous art and creative expression through exhibitions, performances, residencies, community programming and more. It was founded by four of the most powerful art voices in the city — Anishnaabe and Kanienkhá:ka artists Hannah Claus, Caroline Monnet, Nadia Myre and Skawennati — and has their dedication and vision to thank for the quality of its programming.

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With its beautiful big space on Plaza St-Hubert, Articule is one of the more aesthetic artist-run centres in the city. It’s an open-access centre dedicated to social engagement, experimentation and interdisciplinarity, with a focus on representing BIPOC artists. Come here to see art that aims at change, rethinks preconceived systems thinking — and stop into Système for a drink and snack while you’re on the Plaza.

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This St-Henri gallery is what you get when you mix two great minds. Megan Bradley and Antoine Ertaskiran joined forces after each running their respective galleries for years, and from that union came an even more special perspective on contemporary commercial art with a doubly kick-ass list of artists. This commercial space brings drama, excitement, high colour and names that have representation in the nation’s museums, including David Armstrong Six, Jessica Eaton, Janet Werner, Nicolas Grenier, Erin Shirreff and Joseph Tisiga.

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On the theme of unions: René Blouin is an éminence grise of the local commercial art scene, having single-handedly spotted and supported artists that now make up the new canon (Nicolas Baier, Geneviève Cadieux and Pierre Dorion among them). Now in collaboration with Division gallery, still on William in Griffintown,the artist list has grown to rep even more incredible artists like Chloe Wise and Maskull Lasserre, who add a fun, edgy flavour to the roster.

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From a glorious vast space in the heart of Mile End, Simon Blais has been representing some of the province’s greatest artists for decades. He represents fresh young voices on the scene as well, but mostly this is where you go to see (or purchase) art by Québec masters you’ll find in the history books, including Rita Letendre, Marcelle Ferron, Jean McEwen and Marcel Barbeau.

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The great Christine Redfern launched her downtown gallery to level up representation of diverse artists, both in terms of gender and culture, and she has succeeded on every front. This small space around the corner from the SAT is greater than the size of its walls, with a reach that extends into fairs and museums both locally and abroad. You’ll discover captivating art here by the likes of Skawennati, Evergon, JJ Levine and Shanna Strauss.

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Vox and Artexte both call this grand cultural building on the corner of Ste-Catherine and St-Laurent home. Vox is a space dedicated to photography, film and everything in between, while Artexte is a centre that began as an archive of publications on Canadian art and grew to include an exhibition space that’s now a go-to destination.

Conveniently stuck to Le Serpent, one of the best restaurants in town, Fonderie Darling is a great big art space in Griffintown that’s set in an old foundry. Its exhibition spaces include a giant, cavernous room reminiscent of the building’s industrial past, and another side, smaller and more intimate, for more classical exhibition hangings. They also regularly spread outdoors in the warmer months. One of the coolest things about the Fonderie, a real community centre of sorts, is their program of residencies—they have a dozen studio spaces for local and visiting artists onsite.

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