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Contemporary Calgary, former Centennial Planetarium, reopens with its original, now renovated, geodesic dome.Jamie Anholt/Contemporary Calgary

In Calgary, a concrete wonder dreamed up in the past as a place to imagine the future is now a home for the contemporary. The former Centennial Planetarium, a brutalist structure topped by a geodesic dome, reopens this weekend as Contemporary Calgary. The large contemporary art gallery is the culmination of years of efforts by collectors, artists, curators and philanthropists.

And it is a trip – back in time, around the maze of a building (once you find the entrance) and through a contemporary art experience Calgarians have long been craving.

It is an adaptive reuse that makes sense environmentally and economically – but also experientially. Even if at times a particular art installation might be challenged by – or even suffer from – the context of the former building, overall, it just adds to the delight.

“Everyone who walks in goes ‘oh wow I remember this.’ You can almost smell it, you know?,” chief curator Ryan Doherty says.

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The atrium at Contemporary Calgary.Jamie Anholt/Contemporary Calgary

Contemporary Calgary was formed when three local art groups joined forces to bring this vision to life. Proving this was no pie-in-the-sky idea, they eventually secured a 25-year lease from the city, with an extension option, as well as $25-million in city-funded modernization work. The non-collecting institution has now completed the second phase of its planned four-part renovation. The estimated total price tag is $117-million.

Raising money – either from government or privately – was a different ball game when this venture began, before Alberta’s economic woes set in. Ottawa has committed $30-million, contingent on the province matching that. But CEO David Leinster projects confidence on the fundraising front, and says Calgarians recognize the need for a contemporary art space.

“Maybe some think of Calgary as the Calgary Stampede and a western town, but this is a place that has a really wonderful arts community,” Leinster says. He believes this project can “really help people understand that maybe Calgary’s a little more than meets the eye.” The cost of an annual membership is only $20.

Nostalgia and the building’s original intention were key themes as Contemporary Calgary dreamed up its opening exhibitions.

The Planetary exhibition features work created by more than 35 local artists in workshops and residencies at the building.

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Video installation of artist Rocio Graham's Future Memories (2020) at the Contemporary Calgary.Rocio Graham/Rocio Graham

“Those artists were asked to consider ... [the concept of] site and this building and intersecting with memories of it, with their impressions of it, with ideas of nostalgia and the zeitgeist of the time – 1967 when it was built; a very optimistic moment, when space filled our imaginations,” Doherty says.

The result is a group of works as varied and sometimes out there as the building itself.

Alberta Rose W./Ingniq’s The Space of Mohkinstsis (2019) hangs delicately in the atrium above Helena Hadala’s original Mosaic (1979), a mosaic of the Earth (that puts Calgary at its centre). Rose’s beadwork and embroidery installation references the Foucault’s pendulum that used to occupy the space in the building’s former life. It is the first work you encounter before travelling up a narrow ramp into the main space.

Dan Hudson’s Eclipse (2018) uses video installations to represent the 2017 solar eclipse, which had a profound effect on him.

Bill Gardner creates two versions of the planet Uranus’s mythical god namesake, using lint from his clothes dryer.

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Video installations of artist Dan Hudson’s Eclipse (2018) representing the 2017 solar eclipse.Dan Hudson Canmore Canada/Contemporary Calgary

Rocio Graham’s seeds – gathered from her garden, from the banks of the Bow River and elsewhere in Calgary – become constellation-like in her installation Future Memories (2019). “My intention is when people are walking into the space, they’re walking into a universe,” she says.

The local works are complemented with a large-scale installation by U.K. artist Luke Jerram: Museum of the Moon, suspended in the former celestial theatre.

Versions of this work have been installed some 200 times, but this is the first time Jerram’s moon has landed in a former planetarium.

While the context is cool, it’s also a bit restrictive; it’s harder to move around than when the work is installed in an empty hall or exhibition space. Still, oh my God. The bazillion photos of this installation on the internet do not do this justice. Under that six-metre, luminous sculpture, I contemplated the universe. I watched a little girl in a NASA T-shirt stare in wonder. I thought about the incalculable value of creating a home for contemporary art in this city, any city.

On Thursday night, the public was invited in – more than 1200 people showed up, an indication of significant interest. They streamed in, oohing and ahhing at the building’s transformation, as well as the artwork – including some user-friendly AR experiences accessed with smartphones.

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U.K. artist Luke Jerram's Museum of the Moon, suspended in the former celestial theatre.Tech Art, Rotterdam

But the kinks of the building, as Doherty calls them, certainly create some curatorial tests.

Unlike the Flanagan Family Gallery, which is a flexible white cube space with high ceilings built in an addition, the more challenging spaces are in the original parts of the building.

The Ring Gallery is as it sounds – a corridor around the dome that anyone who has visited a planetarium can imagine. With its sloping walls and ceilings, “there are angles upon angles that we have to deal with,” Doherty says.

There are times when elements of the old building collide with the installed works. A beautiful work by Ashley Bedet that looks like shattered dinosaur egg shells (one of the materials she lists is “perseverance”) cascades down and over a wall, approaching one of those old red pull-in-case-of-fire alarms. Lane Shordee’s installation Weather Station (2019) is bracketed by a real-life fire extinguisher and emergency exit sign.

In both instances, it’s fine. In fact Shordee’s work is arguably enhanced by this unintended framework (the planet is on fire). I can imagine scenarios where this will work less well.

Doherty acknowledges the challenge, but he is up for it. “It creates a really dynamic experience, so certain works get amplified by being on these types of walls,” he says. “The space itself becomes an active part of the exhibition. And it’s an artwork in itself.”

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