Nearly 1,000 people wandered in to view the complete makeover of the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery on Monday.
Its grand opening provided some tremendous surprises for visitors and staff alike.
Museum employee Tanya Zuzak, who co-ordinated the open house, said she would have been happy to 300 people during the three-hour event. She was completely floored to count 550 heads in the first hour and 984 by the end of the afternoon.
People who have been visiting the museum for years were taken aback by the bright walls and open spaces, a sharp contrast to the museum with which they had become so familiar.
The renovation has created a good compromise from the original plan, which had been to build an expansive new multi-purpose centre including an art gallery, library and other cultural features, said local author Judith Moody and set designer Harold Truckle, both members of Central Alberta Theatre.
The museum is still too small to exhibit all of its collections, said Moody. But there’s room to expand and there’s still an opportunity in the future to add an art gallery and other features that had to be scrubbed because the original plan was considered too far out of reach.
Among the first things people familiar with the museum noticed was that the permanent exhibit dedicated to local pioneers is gone, creating that much more space to bring in fresh exhibits.
Moody said she was told that the pioneer exhibit would be replaced by rotating exhibits.
“You go to a museum and everything’s out all the time. You’re like in a maze of mustiness, you know. But here, you’re going to have something special that’s going to bring you back time after time.”
But an aura of mustiness has its place, said Truckler, explaining that a museum should appeal to all five senses. He recalled a museum in Winnipeg where he could actually smell the sea, despite being as far inland as any place in Canada.
“Smell is very important to a lot of us, especially older people,” said Truckle, explaining that while his mind is 25, his body is over 70.
Moody commented also on the choice of chairs as the basis for the opening exhibit, including performances with resin lawnchairs by The Chairmen, Flyin’ Bob Palmer and James O’Shea.
Truckle said it was time for some changes at the museum.
“This will give it a wider range of different types of exhibitions,” he said.
Debbie Gillard, who works with the Lacombe museum, said she was amazed with the change and how much the perspective of the museum had changed.
“I’m just kind of a little bit overwhelmed, I guess. It’s so empty. It’s so big,” said Gillard.
Renovations were started two years ago with a federal grant to renovate the washrooms, making them more accessible to people in wheelchairs, said executive director Lorna Johnson. Renovations in the rest of the building were started in April, she said.
Built 30 years ago, the museum needed an upgrade, she said from her spanking new office, located in what used to be the courtyard inside the main entrance.
“We had a number of objectives. We knew we could make no structural changes. What we wanted to do was improve our exhibition spaces so we could offer a greater range of exhibitions, and we wanted to upgrade the fish pond.”
The koi have taken temporary residence at Kerry Wood Nature Centre and will move back once their pond has been flushed out and cleaned up.
Storage is still an issue for the museum, which has 80,000 artifacts in its collections, said Johnson.
The renovation cost $2.8 million in total, covered in part through a grant of $50,000 from Human Resources Canada’s Enabling Accessibility program and another $1.4 million from Heritage Canada. The City of Red Deer picked up the balance.
bkossowan@www.reddeeradvocate.com