13 Must-See Art Destinations in Montreal

I arrived on an unseasonably warm day in October to Montreal, excited to explore the vibrant cultural scene of the city. The next few days, after checking into Hotel Chez Swann, I visited museums, galleries, and arts shops, taking in the city's top spots for art. From stunning street art painted over the MURAL Festival during the summer to the PHI Centre, a space for public performances, exhibitions, and movie screenings, Montreal has a wide variety to offer for arts enthusiasts.

One trend I noticed in the city is Montreal's focus on digital art. At Moment Factory, employees act like digital architects, building visuals, light shows, and virtual technologies that transform our ideas of entertainment. The Society of Arts and Technology is a hub for exploration and development of new ventures in the digital world and includes a giant dome for playing 360° movies. I also traveled by the bike share, Bixby, to visit the city's main museums and its independent galleries.

Thanks to Tourisme Montréal, I was able to get a taste of the culture of the Canadian city. I also stopped by some of the city's most popular hangouts, like the wine bar Buvette Chez Simone, the pub Burgundy Lion, and the delicious Fairmount Bagel Bakery, as well as the famous deli Schwartz's.

For a cultural tour of the city, check out 13 Must-See Art Destinations in Montreal, and make sure to include them the next time you visit.

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Location: 1435 Rue Saint Alexandre Bureau 500, Montreal, QC H3A 2G4

The Quartier des Spectacles is Montreal's physical cultural center. Occupying one square kilometer in the city, the area includes 80 cultural venues, including 30 performance halls, which are used for theater, performances, and festivals. This cultural hub exemplifies the city's dedication to the arts and creates a designated space in the city for entertainment and arts appreciation.

Location: 6250 Hutchison #200A Montreal, QC H2V 4C5

Moment Factory is here to entertain. The team of creatives that work at Moment Factory are like digital wizards, dreaming up light shows, virtual graphics, digital performances, and new technologies for incredible spectacles around the world. For me, Moment Factory was like a hive of architects, expect, instead of working in brick and mortar, they work with lasers, pixels, video, and other forms of digital material. These Internet savvy magicians were the brains behind Madonna's Superbowl halftime show. Last year, they created the 3D mapping of the scenography for Jay-Z's show at Carnegie Hall. They are also behind a multimedia show that was projected on Barcelona's Sagrada Familia. Instead of artists painting with oils on canvas, Moment Factory painted with light and sound on Gaudí's church.

During my tour of Moment Factory, they me showed crates of materials that they use as inspiration for digital projects. One employee was working with a mini model to test how his abstract light projections would look on a wall. They walked me through an immersive show they created for a LIGHT, a nightclub in Las Vegas. The dance hall of LIGHT is covered in HD screens, and this year Moment Factory developed graphics—spinning diamonds, futuristic models, and a nude woman covered in paint— to entertain the clubbers. When the DJs saw the graphics, one of the employees told us, they were almost too impressed to spin. We expect that there are even bigger things still to come from Moment Factory.

Location: 1435 Rue Saint Alexandre Bureau 500, Montreal, QC H3A 2G4

One of Moment Factory's projects in Montreal is called Megaphone. Located in the Quartier des Spectacles, Megaphone is a public space and installation for citizens to speak out on social and political issues in the city. Megaphone enhances the speaker's voice both audibly and visually, with a microphone and by scrolling their worlds across the UQUAM's President Kennedy building, a structure covered in screens that stands next to Megaphone. The light display and sculptural theater made from stacked shipping containers combines art and social consciousness. Megaphone also hosts specific speakers and topics and is open until Nov. 4, 2013.

Location: 407 Rue Saint Pierre, Montreal, QC H2Y 2M3

The PHI Centre is the city's cultural hub contained in one high-tech and green building. The privately owned space was a project by Phoebe Greenberg, who opened the center to the public in 2012. Equipped with a recording studio, a movie theater, an exhibition space, a music venue, a bar, and various event spaces, the PHI Centre acts as a home for people interested in a range of arts. The building itself is an impressive modern construction, suited to transform depending on the needs of a room. For example, the walls in their music venue are made of panels that can be flipped to be either wood or black synthetic material, depending on which acoustically or aesthetically makes sense. Also, the movie theater can be transformed into a wide-open space, flooded with light from its many windows. With most events free or very cheap, the PHI Centre brings the people of Montreal together to experience the arts.

Location: 451 and 465 Saint-Jean, Montreal, QC, H2Y 2R5

DCH/ART is a foundation for contemporary art and gallery space right around the corner from the PHI Centre. Admission is free, and the space shows three to four exhibitions per year. When I visited, they were hosting an exhibition on web artist Cory Arcangel. Arcangel's playful and clever Internet-based works include YouTube videos of cats playing piano that were cut to make one song, a loop from a video game where Shaquille O'Neal repeatedly misses free throws, and two computers that are sending away messages to each other back and forth until they crash. The exhibition, which is wonderfully accessible to anyone who owns a computer, is on view until Nov. 24.

Location: 61201, Boulevard Saint-Laurent Montreal, QB H2X 2S6

The SAT is a haven for digital artists, and Cory Arcangel would fit right in. Inside the doors of this space, artists study, preserve, and develop new digital technologies. Besides nurturing digital artists, it is also home to a 360° movie theater that sits in its enormous dome. When I visited, the SAT screened the work of international digital artists who had made movies specifically for the dome. I lay on the floor in the center of the dome and looked up to watch the graphics envelop me, an experience that is overwhelming and mesmerizing at the same time. Just imagine playing a video game in that space—it would be jarringly real. Also, the SAT is home to the Foodlab, a restaurant where they take the same scientific approach to gastronomy as they do to art. "We serve beer so we can make art," our guide said. Not a bad system.

Location: All over the city

Each year, international and Canadian artists arrive in Montreal to decorate the city's streets for the MURAL Festival that runs during the summer. Street artists of international acclaim, including Gaia, Phlegm, Escif, and others showed up this June to cover the city's streets in their signature styles. While the festival takes place in the warmer months, the works last long after its over. Montreal is so covered in vibrant street art that you can even take mural tours of the city, and colorful graffiti pops up in ever corner, nook, and cranny.

Location: 6250 Hutchison #200A Montreal, QC H2V 4C5

The Fresh Paint Gallery is home to Montreal's graffiti scene. While MURAL Festival is an outlet for the city's outdoor street art movement, Fresh Paint brings graffiti writers into the gallery. Decorating the walls of each room of the gallery are installations by a wide range of graffiti artists who work in disparate styles, including Martin Lachapelle, Trevor Wheatley, Jules Desmarais, Gustav Balderdash, and Gene Pendon. Nothing in the gallery is left untouched, and the walls, floors, and ceilings all become part of the street artists' canvases.

Location: 185 Sainte-Catherine St W, Montreal, QC H2X 3X5

When I visited Montreal's contemporary art museum, many of the rooms were closed because an installation was in progress, but the show "A Matter of Abstraction," which is scheduled until 2016, was on view. While these weren't the big names you see in the Whitney or MOMA, the collection gave a sampling of what abstraction looked like across the border in Canada. The museum is now showing an exhibition called "Beat Nation: Art, Hip-Hop, and Aboriginal Culture," which I was sad to have missed for obvious reasons.

Location: 1380 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montreal, QC H3G 1J5

While the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts may not be able to compete with the Met in terms of their collection of American and European works, the museum highlights Canada's artists throughout history, giving the spotlight to artists we would not otherwise know. The museum also has an impressive contemporary collection and is currently showing a jam-packed exhibition on glass artist Dale Chihuly. Not matter what you think of Chihuly as an artist—like Hirst and Koons, he has garnered criticism for relying on assistants while still bringing in loads of cash— his works on display in Montreal are undoubtedly enchanting. Large-scale and brilliantly colored glass sculptures create underwater scenes, forests, and magical lands made from blown glass. The Chihuly exhibit has been extended until Oct. 27. Also a highlight of the museum was "Auteur Photography in Quebec: A Collection Takes Shape," a moving exhibition that shows the work of 11 photographers from Quebec, which is on view until Nov. 10.

Location: 1920 Baile St, Montreal, QC H3H 2S6

This center for architecture stands further away from the cluster of Montreal's main museums and so is a peaceful respite from the tourist crowds. Currently on work is a show, "Archeology of the Digital," about how digital technologies have helped change the architectural field, moving from the first machines that plotted points with pen on paper to the iPhone. The exhibition may be a little heavy on technical jargon, but it presents a new way to look at the history of architecture. The space also exhibits photo installations of artists who have trained their lenses on architecture, and coming up on Nov. 26 is a show on Le Corbusier called "Casablanca Chandigarh."

Location: 5420, Saint-Laurent Blvd. Suite 100, Montreal, QC H2T 1S1

Located in Montreal's hip Mile End neighborhood, Galerie Simon Blais reminded me of the galleries in Chelsea. Filled with high priced contemporary art, the white walls transport you back to the popular galleries in New York, including the Canadian version of gallerinas. For collectors looking for contemporary art in Canada, this is the place to visit. The current exhibit features visceral and abstract paintings by Marcelle Ferron, a Quebec-born painter who also specialized in glass art.

Location: 5478 St Laurent Blvd, Montreal, QC H2T 1A5

A few doors down from Galerie Simon Blais sits a shop for a very different kind of arts enthusiast, Monastiraki. Inside, you will find prints, postcards, buttons, and other odds and ends from contemporary artists. The works are affordable, and the shop is so filled with curiosities, you could spend hours sifting through drawers of prints. I walked away with a psychedelic black-and-white concert poster, and I wish I could return to purchase more.