Top 5 Montreal Art Exhibits Defining the Week
Montreal does not do art quietly. It debates it, archives it, celebrates it, and occasionally reinvents it. This week’s lineup of montreal art exhibits reflects exactly that tension between legacy and momentum. Institutional milestones meet artist-run transitions, socially charged photography collides with archival memory, and community galleries lean into colour and celebration.
If you want to feel the pulse of the city’s visual culture right now, start here.
1️⃣ Résonances | 40 Years of the Conseil des Arts de Montréal Grand Prize
📍 CAM, 1210 Sherbrooke Street East
🗓 Tuesday, February 10, 2026 | 5 PM to 8 PM
Forty years is not just an anniversary. It is a cultural ledger.
At the CAM, Résonances marks the 40th Grand Prize of the Conseil des Arts de Montréal, curated by Tamar Tembeck. The evening unveils the eight finalists while placing four decades of artistic dialogue under one roof.
Each Grand Prize recipient over the years has been paired with an original work by a Montreal artist responding to their practice. For this edition, more than twenty of these commissioned pieces are brought together, forming a layered conversation about influence, recognition, and the city’s evolving artistic DNA.
Among current montreal art exhibits, this one carries institutional weight. It is polished, celebratory, and reflective, but beneath that surface lies something more compelling: a reminder of how ecosystems are built and sustained over time.
2️⃣ Honouring Marthe Carrier | A Transition at Galerie B-312
📍 Galerie B-312, Belgo Building
🗓 Thursday, February 12, 2026 | Starting at 5:30 PM
Artist-run culture is the backbone of Montreal’s art scene. And this week, one of its architects steps aside.
Marthe Carrier, co-founder of Galerie B-312 in 1991, is being honoured for decades of work shaping Quebec’s network of artist-run centres. Her departure marks not an ending but a generational shift. Maude Hénaire steps in, bringing continuity and new direction after years of collaboration with the gallery, including projects tied to DRAC and MOMENTA.
The evening also launches 30 Years, a publication reflecting on the centre’s trajectory through texts by Michel Boulanger, Marthe Carrier, Emmanuelle Choquette, Daniel Canty, and Didier Morelli. On view as well is Oya’Wih, a collective exhibition primarily featuring Indigenous artists, curated by Michèle St-Amand.
If you follow montreal art exhibits that shape discourse rather than simply fill walls, this one matters. It speaks to infrastructure, community memory, and the slow labour of cultural building.
3️⃣ Carlo Bianchini | Montreal Moments
📍 Club Atwater, 3505 Atwater Street
🗓 Thursday, February 12, 2026 | 6 PM to 9 PM
🎟 Admission: $10
Set inside the private Club Atwater, Carlo Bianchini’s exhibition positions Montreal as both subject and critique.
Working across photography and digital and analog collage, Bianchini explores themes of consumer culture, commercial appropriation, hypersexualization, and social justice. His work draws from the textures of city life and reframes them with an ethnographic sensitivity.
This is not romantic nostalgia. It is urban observation sharpened by cultural awareness.
Among emerging montreal art exhibits, this one signals a generation attentive to social tension and visual overload. It is polished but not detached, analytical yet personal. Montreal becomes both backdrop and protagonist.
4️⃣ Fréquences Ancestrales | Nigra Iuventa
📍 Alliance Française de Montréal, 317 Place d’Youville, Old Montreal
🗓 Thursday, February 12, 2026 | 7 PM to 9 PM
Presented during Black History Month, Fréquences Ancestrales gathers Miryam Charles, Yannis Davy Guibinga, Eno Inyangete, and Ethel Taw in a collective exhibition that navigates memory, inheritance, and transmission.
Curated by Diane Gistal of Nigra Iuventa and Bill Fowo of SAVVY Contemporary, the exhibition extends the intellectual framework of In the Wake of Our Archives, previously presented at Articule and the Goethe-Institut Montréal.
This is one of the more conceptually grounded montreal art exhibits this week. It moves beyond surface celebration and asks sharper questions about archives, diaspora, and narrative control. The collaboration between Alliance Française, SAVVY Contemporary, and the Goethe-Institut reinforces Montreal’s role as a node in a global cultural dialogue.
5️⃣ Rouge Incandescent | Galerie L’Artiste
📍 1111 Bellechasse Street
🗓 Friday, February 13, 2026 | 5 PM to 8 PM
Not every exhibition needs to be solemn.
Rouge Incandescent leans into colour, emotion, and the theatrical energy of Valentine’s week. Galerie L’Artiste, operating since 2006 under the direction of artist and creativity coach Sylvie Santerre, offers a more intimate and community-driven atmosphere.
This collective exhibition celebrates imagination and bold palettes while inviting direct engagement with the artists themselves.
Among this week’s montreal art exhibits, this is the one that feels celebratory without apology. Less theory, more visceral impact. Sometimes that balance is exactly what the cultural calendar needs.
For more Montreal vernissages, radio features, and in depth coverage of visual arts and related disciplines, explore Magazine Radio In Situ, one of the city’s few programs fully dedicated to visual arts since 2010.
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This week’s montreal art exhibits are not just events. They are markers of where the city’s creative energy is currently concentrated. And in Montreal, that energy rarely stands still.
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