The new season at museums and foundations is slowly opening with a rich program dominated by the MOMENTA biennale, which began this week, along with exhibitions extending well into 2026. A prime example combining both characteristics can be found at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, where the MOMENTA biennale component will run for six months, featuring works by Iván Argote, Maureen Gruben, Joyce Joumaa, Niap, Lee Shulman, Omar Victor Diop - The Anonymous Project, and Sanaz Sohrabi, all gathered around the theme of the missing image.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is showing increased interest in the work of living local artists. While Marie-Claire Blais's Montreal-based exhibition continues until January 4th and Toronto artist Anique Jordan presents her work as part of MOMENTA until February 1st, visitors can also discover a retrospective dedicated to Kent Monkman, an artist and member of the ôcêkwi sîpiy, Fisher River Cree Nation. Monkman has masterfully appropriated grand historical painting and landscapes from the 18th and 19th centuries.
Titled "History is Painted by the Winners," the exhibition promises to be a highlight of the fall season, inviting viewers to reread art history and Monkman's work. Living between New York and Toronto, Monkman is notably exhibiting two immense seven-meter-wide canvases created for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2019. The exhibition will feature Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, his signature character, a reimagined figure of the "berdache." The exhibition is curated by Léuli Eshrāghi and John Lukavic and runs at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from September 27, 2025, to March 8, 2026.
The concept of presence, embodying a struggle against alienation in a capitalist society that instrumentalizes and robotizes individuals, preventing them from truly connecting to the reality of their lives, runs through modern and contemporary art. Art theorist Michael Fried formulated this as early as 1967 with the famous phrase "Presentness is grace." Irene F. Whittome, who has extensively worked on notions of museums, exhibitions, collections, and traces, invites viewers to see her most recent works that fit into this relationship with the world.
In 2014, Whittome left Montreal to settle in a disused quarry in Ogden, in the Eastern Townships, in order to "be here, in nature, fully in the present moment," according to the press release. The exhibition "I am here" will showcase her relationship with nature and the here-and-now, while also embodying "a poetic stance." Curated by Marie J. Jean, the exhibition runs at the Guido Molinari Foundation from October 9 to December 21.
The intriguing title "Against the Tyranny of the Real: Materiality and Camp Exuberance in Video-Performance" explores themes closely associated with queer aesthetics. According to Susan Sontag, camp "is fundamentally opposed to the natural, drawn toward artifice and exaggeration." The exhibition features works by Maya Ben David, Mike Bourscheid, Edith Brunette and François Lemieux, Beth Frey with Phth, Lenore Claire Herrem, Marisa Hoicka, and Mathieu Lacroix. Curated by Chloë Lum and Yannick Desranleau, it runs at the Joliette Art Museum from October 4, 2025, to January 11, 2026.
Running concurrently at the same venue are "The Most Beautiful Order in the World" by artist Sameer Farooq, curated by Mona Filip, and "Danseprophétiqueàlîlebizarre" by the duo Geneviève Matthieu, presented by Ji-Yoon Han. Unfortunately, the duo is now without Matthieu Dumont, who passed away last February.
The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) will address a surprising subject with "What Modernity," offering a reinterpretation of architecture built in the People's Republic of China between 1949 and 1979. The exhibition challenges the prejudice that a Chinese national and socialist identity erased all forms of originality in building construction in the country. It also aims to show an entire network of influences both internal and external to the Eastern Bloc and Mao's China. Curated by Shirley Surya, the exhibition is produced and organized in collaboration with the M Museum in Hong Kong and runs from November 20, 2025, to April 12, 2026.
A major event this fall will draw attention to Toronto, where more than 25 years have passed since the last Canadian retrospective dedicated to Vancouver photographer Jeff Wall, which took place in 1999 at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art. This highly anticipated retrospective will span three floors of the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (MOCA). Wall's art is often associated with his iconic light boxes or the themes he stages, but his work primarily aims to draw viewers into suspended visual narratives that are both highly constructed and open to reflection.
This exhibition seeks to highlight "photographic works made in Canada, inviting visitors to explore the history, evolution, and future of artistic practices related to photographic imagery in this country." In this period of renewed attention to the Canadian context, it celebrates "the powerful and lasting role that photography has played in constructing national cultural identity." Curated by Kathleen Bartels, the exhibition runs from October 19, 2025, to March 22, 2026.
Additional notable exhibitions include "Contrast and Indifference" featuring Larissa Fassler, Cécile Hartmann, Isabelle Hayeur, and Capucine Vever, curated by Catherine Bédard at the Grantham Foundation, co-produced with the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, running from September 13 to November 23. The McCord Stewart Museum presents "Africa Fashion," an exhibition conceived by London's Victoria and Albert Museum, featuring creations by Naïma Bennis, Shade Thomas-Fahm, Chris Seydou, Kofi Ansah, and Alphadi, from September 25, 2025, to February 1, 2026. At PHI, visitors can explore "Unity in Darkness" by Manuel Mathieu and "Sensory Superconsciousness" by Keiken from October 23, 2025, to March 8, 2026.
