Art Gallery of Grande Prairie to be closed for much of 2026

Repairs to the Montrose Cultural Centre will temporarily close the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie for much of 2026. 

Gallery executive director Jessica Groome says the gallery will continue its education programming from the Grande Prairie Museum, and the permanent collection will be stored at the South Peace Regional Archives at Centre 2000.

“We’re taking the time to focus on the permanent collection, programming, the (new) residency program, and research for future exhibitions,” said Groome.

The gallery plans to relaunch the Prairie North Residency in partnership with Northwestern Polytechnic in the new year. 

“We’ll invite Les Ramsay and Scott Bertram, two artists who have shows in the fall at the gallery, to do a month-long residency at NWP Studios in the summer and create work towards their exhibitions that will open in the fall.”

Groome says that the residency was first active in the early 2000s with a large group of artists, but the relaunch is starting with just the two artists. 

She says the artists will use the studio space at NWP to create new exhibits for the gallery’s fall re-opening. 

Permanent Collection

While the permanent collection is at the South Peace Regional Archives, the gallery will be using the time to catalogue the collection’s 850 pieces.

“We’ve never had a registrar at the gallery, and so that means that the records for all of these artworks are scattered, some of them are digital, some of them are analogue, some of them don’t exist at all,” said Groome. 

She says the hope is to make the collection available to the public for online viewing and searching once the work is complete. Once the collection is catalogued, the gallery will also be able to begin lending pieces to other institutions.

“We had to put a pause on lending artwork out, just until we can kind of regroup and recatalog, so definitely it is a big project that is not only an important community resource, educational resource, cultural resource, but one that will again connect us with a greater national dialogue,” says Groome.

During the closure, the Travelling Exhibition Program Northwest (TREX NW) wall will remain active, says TREX NW curator Jamie-Lee Cormier.

She says TREX NW will have a call for submissions in January for artists to exhibit on the wall over the next year.

The renovations are mostly being done behind the scenes, and the gallery spaces themselves will still look the same when it reopens next fall. 

“It will probably look the same when we reopen, but we are told that it will be more secure and long-lasting going forward,” said Groome.