Skip to content

Museum closes tenders for audio-visual project

A project giving sound and visual life to the trains and other artifacts inside Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery’s new permanent exhibit will soon be rolling out.

A project giving sound and visual life to the trains and other artifacts inside Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery’s new permanent exhibit will soon be rolling out.

Museum executive director Lorna Johnson said that tenders for the audio-visual component of the $1.5-million exhibit have recently closed. Several bids from across the country were received.

The museum and art gallery is set to open the exhibit by March 25, 2013. The project should be done by March 1.

The audio-visual component includes a section where people will be able to walk under a pretend Canadian Pacific Railway bridge, where a train is moving along the track.

There’s audio-visual component will tell the story of Red Deer’s early days, including from the perspective Leonard Gaetz, Red Deer’s first mayor. He died in Red Deer in 1907.

Lots of sounds will come from the Club Cafe, named after a restaurant that operated downtown for about 80 years.

Johnson said it’s expected the “productions” project involving the building of displays will be tendered in September. The contractor is expected to be hired in October.

“Then the work really begins in earnest because the fabricators will be building the settings,” said Johnson.

Museum staff are just finalizing the list of artifacts. Mounts will then be made for each of them.

“Things have to be prepared for display so we’ll be very busy with that for the next six months,” said Johnson. “We’ll have about 1,000 artifacts in the exhibition. The old exhibit had about 300.”

The old permanent exhibit had been around for 30 years before it was taken down a couple of years ago, she added.

The new permanent history exhibition will consist of four separate themes — Unique Settlement History, Community Spirit, Innovators and Leaders, and Our Red Deer.

People will learn more about the 100-plus years of history in Red Deer, as well as the present and future life of Red Deer. The central theme will revolve around Red Deer’s unusual settlement history, shaped by the ingenuity, leadership and community spirit that is still evident today.

ltester@www.reddeeradvocate.com