Fort Calgary reopens after 4-month closure with exhibits aimed at sharing different perspectives

From intricately designed dishes to massive murals to colourful headdresses, Fort Calgary's new exhibit, Culture & Kin: Reclaiming the Chinese Narrative through Contemporary Art, is meant to immerse visitors into the journey of Chinese immigrants to the city.

Instead of a more traditional historical exhibit, the showcase focuses more on the arts and culture people brought with them, saidVicki Van Chau, the exhibit's curator.

She'san artist and filmmaker, not a historian. So when Fort Calgary approached her about the project, she said she wanted to find artists who could tell good stories through their work.

"I definitely wanted to give a really diverse range of artistic practices to really showcase what the Chinese community has brought into Calgary," she said in an interview with The Homestretch.

"It's just so great that museums like Fort Calgary are giving us space for these sorts of communities to be really represented."

Fort Calgary closed its interpretive centre on January 25 after severe water damage caused by roof issues. The museum's walls were left streaked and stained, an electrical panel was damaged and large pieces of the ceiling were either deformed or had fallen down completely.

Restoration work began, along with some upgrades and a refresh, according to director of community engagement with Fort Calgary, Rebekah Jarvis.

They were able to keep the Barracks open for tours, but the loss of the interpretive centre meant four months of lost revenue for the facility.

"It's been really rough. We haven't had visitors in. So of course financially that hurt us," she said. "Then also just the cost of repairs. We'll probably have a final tally on what things cost next week, but it's not a small number."

Along with reopening the museum, Fort Calgary is unveiling three new exhibits, including Van Chau's.

There is a large display called Unravelling Complex Stories, which includes a broader focus on the history of the site itself.Innai'tsiyiyaawa is a selection of panels surrounding the statue of Colonel Macleod, adding more Indigenous context to that point in history.

"We're really aiming at telling more diverse stories and sharing the voices of different groups of people, different communities, especially marginalized voices," Jarvis said. "Let's tell maybe the same stories from different perspectives."

With the museum reopening, admission is pay what you can until Sunday.

Fort Calgary also recently announcedit would be resurrecting its community garden, which will support new programing related to Indigenous and sustainablefood practices.

Culture & Kin

In one of the displays that's part of the Culture & Kin exhibit, visual artist Alex Kwong created a large mural of his great grandparents, Wong Kwong and Yee Von, which is based on a real photo taken outside a laundromat in RevelstokeB.C.

"There's just this really great story of these four generations of his family and sort of how they migrated here," Van Chau said.

LISTEN | The Homestretch's Jenny Howe takes a tour of the Culture & Kin exhibit:

In another display one of several in the exhibitChinese opera headdresses by artistCarrie Yap hang from the ceiling surrounded by a prairie landscape.

Previously, Van Chau said Fort Calgary only hada small panel depictingChinese men aboard a wagon selling produce to show how the community came to the city.

"A lot of the history that is being told about the Chinese community has a lot to do with, they were here for the railroad, they opened laundromats and businesses and stuff, but nobody really talked about the art that was coming in with them," she said.

"I really want people to kind of know that the Chinese community brought so much more."

Each of the artists involved in the exhibit also contributed to a podcast so visitors could learn more about their work.

For Van Chau, putting the exhibit together was also a personal experience. She was born and raised in Calgary, but she says her parents came to the city as refugees in the 1970s.

"This exhibition for me was being able to connect back to that and also connect back to the community that's around here, and being humbled by the stories."