Montreal Gay Village’s famous rainbow balls taken down and offered for sale

Sep 3, 2019 | 3:03 PM

MONTREAL — A well-known piece of public art that hangs over Montreal’s Gay Village is being dismantled and sold off in pieces to the public.

Known as “18 Shades of Gay,” the installation is made up of 180,000 multicoloured plastic balls strung in rows above Ste-Catherine street, evoking the rainbow LGBTQ flag.

The village’s commercial development corporation says that after nine years on display, the landscape artist who designed the ball art wants it to come down to make way for another artist’s work.

For $100, members of the public can obtain 54 of the balls in a single colour, plus everything they’ll need to string them up.