Here art isn’t tucked away. It moves with the rhythm of the streets, shifts with the seasons and invites you to look again at the places you thought you knew.
Exhibition highlights
This fall, Calgary’s art scene shines with three compelling exhibitions that celebrate Indigenous storytelling and Canadian sculptural legacy. They Come Together at Crawlspace Gallery and The People and the Lodge at The Bows showcase contemporary Indigenous artists exploring land, history and cultural symbolism through digital and modern mediums, both free and open to the public.
Meanwhile, Fragment to Form at Devonian Gardens honours the six-decade career of abstract sculptor Katie Ohe, uniting her public and private works for the first time and spotlighting the restoration of her iconic piece Day and Night. Together, these exhibitions offer a powerful reflection on memory, resilience and artistic innovation.
Art events in Calgary
Icons in motion
Some works are so iconic they’ve become part of the city’s DNA. Wonderland, Jaume Plensa’s luminous wire-mesh portrait at The Bow, catches every changing sky. Step inside it, and the skyline bends and blurs — a reminder that art, like people, holds space within it.
Movement continues across downtown. Outside the Calgary Central Library, Christian Moeller’s kinetic sculpture TRIO stands ten metres tall as three mildly anthropomorphic figures endlessly rock back and forth like massive multi-coloured toys. On the other side of downtown, Chinook Arc in Barb Scott Park responds to motion and light, glowing and shifting with every passerby. Art here isn’t something you observe; it’s something you move through.
Even the skyline joins in. After sunset, TELUS Sky becomes a digital canvas for Douglas Coupland’s Northern Lights bathing downtown in waves of colour that echo the aurora. The Peace Bridge, by Santiago Calatrava, arcs across the Bow River like a red ribbon of movement that is lit up and busy with people in summer evenings. Photographers around the world agree the Peace Bridge is both architecture and sculpture at once.
Narratives cast in bronze
Some works leave their mark in stillness but stay vivid long after you’ve passed by. On Stephen Avenue, McElcheran’s Conversation captures the poise and irony of a deal mid-strike, while near City Hall, Mario Armengol’s The Family of Man towers over the plaza — nine figures in quiet dialogue with the skyline. On the corner of 10th Ave S.E., a four-metre bronze Van Gogh Monumental by French sculptor Bruno Catalano stands with two companion pieces nearby. Part of his Les Voyageurs series, the fragmented figures suggest what we carry with us — and what we leave behind — as we move through the world.
Together, these works create a downtown that hums with expression. Murals meet metal, light meets motion, and the city itself becomes the gallery.
So, walk a little slower and look up. Notice the art that catches the corner of your eye — it’s Calgary, speaking in colour.
