ONTARIO (Ottawa and Toronto)
Art Gallery of Ontario – until Jan. 5, 2026
There are a number of exhibitions currently on display at the AGO, the most prominent of which is undoubtedly Joyce Wieland: Heart On. Active between the 1960s and 1980s, this Canadian artist was known for her humorous and incisive art, which contributed to the evolution of ideas about gender, nation, and ecology. Her rich and colourful body of work includes textiles, collages, prints, drawings, and video creations. www.ago.ca
Hero by Erica Rutherford, National Gallery of Canada
National Gallery of Canada – until Oct. 13, 2025
Erica Rutherford: Her Lives, Her Works offers a comprehensive overview (more than 100 works accompanied by documentary material) of the Prince Edward Island-based artist’s career, whose colourful life and work revolved around the quest for identity and community. www.gallery.ca
Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto – Oct. 19 to March 22
Considered one of Canada’s most influential living artists, best known for his large-format light boxes and innovative approach to photography, Jeff Wall will be the subject of MOCA’s next exhibition. His photographs, taken between 1984 and 2023, will occupy all three floors of the museum. www.moca.ca
QUEBEC (Montreal, Quebec, and elsewhere)
Montreal Memory Centre – ongoing
MEM, located at the corner of Sainte-Catherine Street and Saint-Laurent Boulevard, offers immersive and surprising exploratory tours of the city. From October to December, you can see the video exhibition Détours – Rencontres urbaines, where Montreal residents share their unique worlds nestled in little-known places around the city. www.memmtl.ca
Château Dufresne, Museum and Heritage Site – until Nov. 1
Some witnesses to this most glorious era in Montreal’s history may remember that the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC) was originally housed in a castle in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. The exhibition Sixty Years Ago, the MAC at Château Dufresne brings back memories of this significant period in Quebec’s sociocultural and artistic history. www.chateaudufresne.com
Fonderie Darling – Sept. 11 to Nov. 23
The Fonderie presents Rosa Luxembourg: The Resistant Herbarium, by artist Paula Valero Comín, who has been carrying out her project in various cities since 2020, drawing connections between local plants, chosen for their properties, and women committed to protecting life. www.fonderiedarling.org
Art-Image Gallery and Espace Odyssée (Gatineau Cultural Centre) – Nov. 6 to Dec. 21
Intertwined Realities brings together the work of Bozica Radjenovic and Gail Bourgeois, whose drawings, sculptures, photographs, and spatial installations invite reflection on the invisible networks that shape our lives. www.maisondelaculture.ca/artimage
University of Montreal Gallery – until Nov. 15
Panic Room… Pièces de survie articulates a reflection on eco-anxiety. Paintings, tapestries, embroideries, videos, drawings, and sculptures offer a moment of respite and a safe place to take stock of the times ahead. www.galerie.umontreal.ca
Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, Concordia University – Sept. 3 to Nov. 1
Where the Waters Meet by noise music composer and multidisciplinary artist Raven Chacon, a member of the Navajo Nation, who combines sound and performance art to explore issues of inscription, transmission, and circulation of Indigenous narratives in the face of dominant power structures. www.ellengallery.concordia.ca
Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art – Sept. 11 to March 8
The group exhibition Éloges de l’image manquante (In Praise of the Missing Image) takes a look at “how the stories we are told are told, and by whom.” Recent and new works by artists Iván Argote, Maureen Gruben, Lee Shulman and Omar Victor Diop (The Anonymous Project), Joyce Joumaa, Niap, and Sanaz Sohrabi. www.macm.org
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts – until Jan. 4
Visual artist Marie-Claire Blais unveils Lumières déferlantes at the MMFA, an exhibition specially designed for the museum’s spaces. Drawing on her initial career in architecture, the exhibition consists of a “monumental” installation, paintings, and a sound work that presents atmospheres painted in shades of pink, blue, and orange evoking the rising and setting of the day. www.mbam.qc.ca
Sherbrooke Museum of Fine Arts – Oct. 2 to Jan. 4
Two exhibitions focusing on the city of Sherbrooke will open simultaneously in October: Gordon et Henri vont se balader en ville by Tanya Morand, and Ultra Nan: De qualité fantaisie. The first features collages of illustrations and photographs that invite viewers to discover the city’s cultural heritage through a process of cutting and reassembling. The second is dedicated to a character who appeared on the Sherbrooke scene more than 20 years ago: the alter ego of his creator, who has a secret identity. Through illustrations, Ultra Nan aims to make the experience of art and beauty accessible by expressing civic concerns. www.mbas.qc.ca
McCord Stewart Museum – Sept. 25 to Feb. 1
Afrique Mode Exhibition, McCord Stewart Museum
Powered by Montreal Fashion Week, the Canadian premiere of the Afrique Mode exhibition brings to the McCord Museum the wearable art of visionary designers from across Africa: Naïma Bennis, Shade Thomas-Fahm, Chris Seydou, Kofi Ansah, Alphadi, Imane Ayissi, IAMISIGO, Moshions, Thebe Magugu, and Sindiso Khumalo. www.musee-mccord-stewart.ca
Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec – until Jan. 4
The retrospective Niki de Saint Phalle – The 1980s and 1990s: Art in Freedom aims to showcase the later works of this leading artist of the New Realism movement, who captured the imagination in the 1960s and 1970s with her rifle paintings and famous Nanas. www.mnbaq.org
Translation by Eva Stone-Barney
