Montreal’s Casa Bianca closes doors temporarily for a transformation

In the midst of a worldwide pandemic, owners of Casa Bianca in Montreal’s Plateau-Mont-Royal, and creators of the non-profit Project Casa, Danielle Lysaught and Paul Hamelin, generously opened their home to artists whose projects had been cancelled.

Since then, they’ve hosted almost 40 exhibitions, showcasing art from more than 140 artists.

Project Casa has been such a hit, receiving nearly 15 thousand visitors, that they’ve decided to temporarily close their doors to begin their new transformation project.

The transformation will include an extension at the back of the building, adding a new ground-floor exhibition space, distinct entrances, a new private terrace and two new housing units, one in the basement and the other on the upper floor.

 Exhibitions are currently being removed and construction to begin imminently, with the reopening set for the fall of 2026.

“One thing that won’t be modified is the fountain,” said Paul Hamelin, Project Casa co-owner & founder.

Originally a bed & breakfast, Lysaught and Hamelin have been temporarily using the main floor of their century-old home as an exhibition space for artists, but now they have even bigger plans for their home.

“After 5 years, we see that the project is working very well and we want to perpetuate the project,” says Hamelin. “Now we want to make it last, so we transformed the house.”

“In fact, we keep the original house as it was, in fact, we want to bring it as close as possible as it was when it was built in 1912,” he added.

While the interior of the home will be retrofitted with an expanded ground-floor exhibition room, a new large exhibition room on the first floor and a new reception area at the main entrance, Casa Bianca’s exterior façade will also be restored as well as the addition of an independent entrance to the gallery with a slight modern twist.

For Lysaught and Hamelin, this new transformation will help them to continue with the non-profit organization Project Casa which they established in December 2023, that will allow them to use the new and expanded spaces to showcase the works of artists to the public.

“The kind of project they like to pursue is very much something to help people who are in these situations where they’re sort of, it’s going to be a good help for them to make a little step,” said Rafael Sottolichio, painter and muralist and friend of the couple.

“So, either young people who are beginning their career or mature artists who have fallen between cracks of the gallery system,” he said.

Sottolichio himself had an four-week exhibition at Casa Bianca, after Lysaught and Hamelin saw him working on large and colourful paintings for a gallery exhibition that was cancelled due to COVID. As Sottolichio says, their generosity helped him get back on his feet.

“A lot of people came to the show, and since I hadn’t shown in maybe two or three years in Montreal and so many people showed up that were really interested and I managed to sell a lot of paintings, and these sales became one of my greatest hits in my career,” Sottolichio explained.

There won’t be any more exhibitions during the transformation, but the art-loving couple plan to re-open their doors in the fall of 2026.

“The perpetuation of the space, and the idea to have an open house to people to visit art, to have access to contemporary art and that is quite exciting,” described Hamelin when speaking of what excites him the most about the transformation.