As part of an institutional pivot that will take the combination art and history museum in a new direction, Calgary’s Glenbow Museum has officially closed its doors ahead of a three-year-long renovation project meant to reinterpret the 55-year-old museum’s image and impact on the local community. 

DIALOG is behind the $120 million plan to make the museum significantly more inclusive, responsive, and accessible, transforming the existing “bunker-like” structure from 1976 into a catalyst for an entirely reimagined public program that aligns more succinctly with Glenbow’s stated goals. 

"This museum's mission sits squarely in between the important cultural issues of art and history, and the timing could not be better to help create a facility far more conducive to the important current conversations around cultural inclusion happening in Canada and across the globe,” lead designer Robert Claiborne said in a statement. 

The existing eight-story building will be transformed into a more open and visitor-friendly scheme. A new centralized vertical gallery will occupy the museum’s first five floors, while a new restaurant and rooftop space will be added to increase the connectivity of the space, which sees around 150,000 visitors a year. 

A new theater and enhanced gallery spaces highlight the museum’s improved ability to exhibit its 250,000-piece collection in addition to the structural changes, which will include a more accessible external front entryway for the first time in the building’s 45-year-history. The Brutalist structure will also be completely “re-skinned” by removing its cast-in-place concrete panels and replacing them with a porous, ultra-lightweight material that allows for transparent views into the interior of the museum à la the newly opened Winnipeg Art Gallery and Broad Museum in Los Angeles. 

Once complete, the Glenbow will join DIALOG's new Calgary Central Library, which opened in 2018 in collaboration with Snøhetta, as high-profile projects that help define the state of culture in the city's bustling downtown area.

The museum will reopen a temporary satellite space nearby in February and will operate there until renovations are completed in the fall of 2024.