Art Gallery to close for maintenance

THE Art Gallery of Ballarat is set to close until next year while maintenance is conducted throughout the building.

From Monday 3 February, the de-installation of some temporary exhibitions including Medieval to Metal will commence, while from Monday 3 March the entire gallery will close.

The building will be fitted with a new Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning, or HVAC, system with $5.5 million from the City of Ballarat.

The existing system is at its end-of-life and the new system will ensure the building meets international museum standards and is important for securing international exhibitions.

Art Gallery of Ballarat director Louise Tegart said that although it was disappointing to close the space, installing a new HVAC system is essential.

“These are the first major capital works that have occurred here at the Art Gallery of Ballarat in at least 20 years,” she said.

“Maintaining an environment which is constant in both temperature and humidity is really the most critical part of managing a gallery or museum.”

“We understand that members of the public may be disappointed by the fact the gallery is going to be closed for most of 2025 but we’re really looking forward to reopen in early 2026 with more of the collection on display and an exciting program of exhibitions.”

The passenger and freight lifts will also be refurbished, and interior wall lining will be enhanced to enable artwork displays at various heights.

This will allow more of the permanent collection to be displayed.

The State Government has provided more than $500,000 to upgrade the gallery’s skylights to energy efficient LED panels so more light sensitive works can be displayed.

While the gallery is closed, back-of-house staff will work on collection digitisation and documentation, and forward planning.

Front-of-house staff will contribute to other projects such as the gallery’s pop-up shop, the Backspace exhibition program, NextGen 2025 which will be showcased at GovHub, and off-site education programs.

“No staff will be let go, front-of-house staff will be deployed at the pop-up activities around Ballarat and our curatorial staff will be really engaged working on the collection,” said Ms Tegart.

“One of the major projects that we will be doing with the collection is digitisation, enabling more of the collection to be publicly available online.”

The gallery is expected to reopen in early 2026.