Dasilva from Montreal

About me I'm an English teacher and freelance writer, passionate about travel, reading, photography and coffee! You'll often find me checking out new cafés in my city. Why Montreal What I love about Montreal is the diversity. There are people from all over the world who live here, allowing for the opportunity to learn from and about a variety of cultures. I also love all o...

Sep 9, 2025

The Illuminated Crowd Montreal

Kitsch public art piece

""The Illuminated Crowd" in Montreal is a sculpture of 65 people with exaggerated facial expressions. Everyone's passed by, but few people really notice it!"

Right in the heart of Montreal on McGill College street is a sculpture that any local who has been downtown has seen or walked by at least a dozen times, but few pay even a little attention to it, and most probably don’t even know its name. The Illuminated Crowd is a sculpture of 65 people with exaggerated features standing in different poses. Since its appearance in the mid-eighties, It’s kind of become synonymous with Montreal, and though The Illuminated Crowd isn’t one of Montreal’s best-kept secrets, whenever friends visit from out of town, I bring them to see it.

It’s fun to get up close and examine each figure in more detail (including the little guy hidden between two taller people) and interpret what the whole piece is about. Because of the sculpture’s colour, an odd yellowish-beige, and the strange faces and body shapes, The Illuminated Crowd is a kitsch piece of art, great to take photos with.

Art & culture

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About this spot

Avenue McGill College 1981

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