Current Exhibitions

On September 10, 2025, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts (AFA) launched the AFA art house, a new visual arts gallery located in Calgary dedicated to exhibiting Alberta artists. The gallery features works by Alberta artists including artworks from the AFA Art Collection, the largest collection in the world of visual arts by Albertan artists. 

The AFA art house is located on the second floor in The Edison building (150 9 Ave SW) in Downtown Calgary. The inaugural exhibition, New Views, opened to the public on September 11, 2025 and features a diverse selection of 50 AFA artworks acquired by the Collection. The exhibition features Portrait of Don Getty, a print featuring former Alberta Premier Don Getty’s Edmonton Elks (formerly "Eskimos") player card. The exhibition also features artworks that have never been publicly exhibited before. 

“The AFA art house celebrates the creativity, history and talent that define Alberta’s arts community. The AFA art house is another way we are supporting artists and providing opportunities for Albertans to view and experience Alberta art, including pieces from the AFA’s own collection. We are pleased to be partnering with the City of Calgary and Aspen Properties to bring this space to life and contribute to Calgary’s downtown revitalization.” 

Cynthia P. Moore, AFA Chair

"The AFA art house is an inspired new addition to downtown Calgary. A space that celebrates and showcases the incredible talent of Alberta artists, expanding public access to the largest collection of visual artworks by Alberta artists in the world. Alberta's government is proud to invest over $40 million to the arts through Budget 2025, fueling creativity, economic growth and vibrant communities."

Tanya Fir, Minister of Arts, Culture and Status of Women

In addition to New Views, the AFA is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in the AFA art house will feature Samantha Williams-Chapelsky, the 2024-25 Alberta Artist in Residence/Arts Ambassador, and selected works from her “Sky, Stone, and Prairie: Plein Air Perspectives of Alberta” project. This exhibition will open in October 2025. 

The AFA art house strengthens the AFA’s commitment to celebrating local art while contributing to Calgary’s downtown revitalization.

The AFA welcomes the public to visit art house. Admission is free and the gallery is open Tuesday through Friday, from noon to 4 p.m. 

Quick facts

• The AFA Art Collection was established more than 50 years ago in 1972, initially proposed as “an opportunity to support and encourage Alberta artists by purchasing original works, as well as creating a legacy collection for the people of Alberta.”
• The AFA Art Collection includes 9,565 artworks by more than 1,700 Alberta artists.
• In 2023, the visual and applied arts and live performance industries contributed approximately $1.3 billion in GDP and sustained over 18,000 jobs in Alberta.

Multimedia

• Download the press release (PDF)
• Watch a preview video about the gallery
• Watch the AFA art house opening event reel

Download photos from the event

• Photo 1: AFA art house opening September 10, 2025 - main floor lobby of The Edison building. Photo credit David Kotsibie.
• Photo 2: AFA Chair Cynthia P. Moore is joined by Honourable Tanya Fir, Minister of Arts, Culture and Status of Women to open AFA art house on September 10, 2025. Photo credit David Kotsibie.
• Photo 3: AFA art house opening September 10, 2025 - interior view of the art house gallery. Photo credit David Kotsibie.
• Photo 4: The Board of Directors of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts (AFA) and the Minister of Arts, Culture and Status of Women at the AFA art house opening September 10, 2025. Pictured left to right: Shana Yang, Le Bo, Cynthia P. Moore, Honourable Tanya Fir, Yasmin Jivraj, Melody McKnight, Robert Fernandez. Photo credit David Kotsibie

The travelling exhibition ReconciliACTIONS will be on display at the Esplanade Arts & Heritage Centre in Medicine Hat from September 6 - 27, 2025. 

This exhibition brings together work by 21 Indigenous artists. It is meant to remind us that reconciliation is an ongoing process, a chain of care and repair, not a one-and-done event. Decolonizing our relationships with one another and drawing new pathways of understanding based on mutual respect is empowering for all of us. Indigenous, settler, immigrant, and refugee alike all play an integral role in enacting reconciliation.

ReconciliACTIONS invites viewers to contemplate how they can show up with care both individually and collectively in actively carrying reconciliation forward. All persons have the agency to create ripples of change, and the Indigenous artists who are included in this exhibition are contributing to this change by educating the public and sharing their knowledge and experiences through visual forms. As you look at each artwork, consider its story, consider the artist, and consider how your own actions can be instruments of change in the ongoing process of reconciliation. 

This exhibition was curated by Ash Slemming, TREX Southwest and Diana Frost, Colouring it Forward. It is currently on a 3-year tour throughout Alberta with the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Travelling Exhibition program.

View the Exhibition Catalogue 

World Art Day

Each year, on 15 April, World Art Day celebrations help reinforce the links between artistic creations and society, encourage greater awareness of the diversity of artistic expressions and highlight the contribution of artists to sustainable development. It is also an occasion to shine a light on arts education in schools, as culture can pave the way for inclusive and equitable education.

Sharing Alberta's art

With over 9,000 artworks in the AFA Art Collection, there is always a need to find creative ways to share Alberta's art province wide. In any given year, the AFA has an incredible 20-25% of its collection in public circulation. This is achieved through exhibition loans, extended loans, and touring and art placement programs.

Through the TREX Curators/Managers in the TREX program, the AFA has been able to share art throughout the province bringing Albertan creativity to 187 venues in 95 communities, and reaching over 615,000 Albertans!

Publicly accessible art

Throughout the province you can find works from the AFA Art Collection on display in publicly accessible areas. Keep an eye on social media on World Art Day and see if your favourite and recognizable locations are sharing art from the Collection! 

Folk Memoirs

Location: St. John Paul II High School, Grande Prairie (April 17 - May 14)

Featured artwork:

Hazel Litzgus
Canning Peaches, 1970
Watercolour on paper
Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts

About the exhibition:

Folk Memoirs is a collection of visual narratives experienced while growing up on the Alberta prairies. Sourcing these rare historical moments from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts permanent collection, you will see paintings by Hazel Litzgus, Irene McCaugherty, William Panko and Doris Zaharichuk. The works are described as folk art, which is a unique style of art that reflects the cultural life of a community. Inspired by scenes from everyday life including: helping with housework, farm labor, playing outside, going to rodeos and more.

A memoir is a narrative composed from personal experience. The paintings in this show speak for themselves, taking you back in time to recall or learn the history of what life was like in the mid nineteen hundreds. Folk art takes on a very whimsical and colourful style of expression. This genre of artists are typically not concerned with making their subject look realistic. As you can see in William Panko’s paintings, he doesn’t worry about painting the scenes with the exact perspective or proportions – rather, he gives the paintings a more two dimensional or ‘flat’ appearance. More importantly, he depicted the story and what he remembered.

This group exhibition showcases simple everyday work-life balance. Hazel Litzgus’s work is a perfect example of this, from painting scenes of harvesting and cattle round up to dancing in the kitchen and rodeos. Enjoy finding hidden details of Irene McCaugherty and Doris Zaharichuk’s paintings as they draw the viewer in to enjoy how natural and simplistic life was. The works in this exhibition are a memoir of the artist’s life, savoring and reflecting on stories of the past.

About the Artist:

Hazel Litzgus continues to captivate the hearts of Albertans with her charming and nostalgic folk images of early Alberta life. Born on a farm near Lloydminister, Alberta, Hazel, through her paintings give us a glimpse of her early childhood and her many recollections of early rural and small town life on the Alberta Prairies.

Working in the unforgiving medium of watercolour, Hazel Litzgus narrates moments from her past in vivid detail with whimsy, in a naïve painting style. Whether it be the detailed wallpaper and patterned linoleum floor in a country farm house, or a school yard full of excited children playing various games, her art work is very reflective of her as a person. Hazel is a charming, soft spoken lady with a strong and determined character. She is full of life and stories and one feels right at ease as she tells of her experiences on the Prairies. Hazel’s book, Where the Meadow Lark Sang was published in 2003 and received great attention. In a review by CM Magazine, University of Manitoba, wrote: “In her use of bright colours and carefully detailed drawing, Litzgus created illustrations that are reminiscent of William Kurelek.”

About TREX

The AFA's Travelling Exhibition (TREX) program strives to ensure every Albertan is provided with an opportunity to enjoy fully developed exhibitions in schools, libraries, health care centres and smaller rural institutions and galleries throughout the province.

The TREX program assists in making both the AFA's extensive art collection and the work of contemporary Alberta artists available to Albertans.

Four regional organizations now coordinate the program for the Foundation:

• The Art Gallery of Grande Prairie - Northwest Alberta
• Art Gallery of Alberta - Northeast and North Central Alberta
• Alberta Society of Artists - Southwest Alberta
• Esplanade Arts & Heritage Centre - Southeast Alberta

These partners offer a wide range of exhibitions to communities from High Level in the north, to Milk River in the south, and virtually everywhere in between.

Faye HeavyShield
blood, 2004
cotton, cotton string, acrylic

In celebration of International Women's Day we are proud to share, blood—the work of  Kainai artist Faye HeavyShield. 

Bold Women

Two of HeavyShield’s installation artworks, blood and homecoming, from the AFA’s Art Collection have been selected for Bold Women, a landmark exhibition at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. 

The show features over forty primarily Indigenous, Black, Newcomers and LGBT women artists as well as those of gender non-conforming identities whose visionary ideas and experimentation demonstrate the concept of boldness through challenging dominant institutional, cultural and social boundaries and reshaping historical narratives. 

Set to open February 18 and running through to July 6, 2025, the exhibition includes 75 artworks from various disciplines including photography, sculpture, textiles, paintings, video, installations and is organized across four galleries each exploring one element of boldness:

• Portrayal / Resistance: ways that portrayals can deny visibility
• Collective Preservation / Liberation: women preserving, healing, and liberating communities across generations
• Nature / Erasure: the erasure of women’s contributions, in conversation with nature
• Wisdom / Knowledge-keeping: transmitting knowledge and women as connectors

The exhibition was curated by Susan Earle, the Spencer Museum’s curator of European and American Art, along with a team of diverse curatorial collaborators from across North America including the Brooklyn Museum’s Curator Dr. Kimberli Grant and Wanda Nanibush, an Anishinaabe curator from the Beausoleil First Nation in Ontario among others. 

About the artist

Faye HeavyShield is a member of the Blood Nation. She graduated from the Alberta College of Art in 1985, and continued her studies at the University of Calgary. Gaining prominence and recognition in the past few years, her work has been the subject of many solo shows including major exhibitions of First Nations contemporary art. HeavyShield's work is a fusion of highly evolved personal and powerful imagery influenced by her Christian and Blood upbringing. Her minimalist installations are metaphors of the human body and a reflection of her personal experiences.

Bold women accelerating action at the AFA

Meet the bold women of the AFA's Board of Directors that are passionate about the arts and work steadfastly to support a vibrant Alberta arts community that sparks innovation, bursts with creativity, fosters understanding, and promotes belonging.  

Click the names of the board members and watch as they share their personal takes on the importance of the arts in Alberta.

Cynthia P. Moore AFA Board Chair Calgary	Yasmin Jivraj Edmonton	Melody McKnight Red Deer	Shana Yang Calgary

About International Women's Day

International Women’s Day is celebrated annually on March 8 around the globe. IWD has been celebrated globally since 1911 and is an important day that highlights the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.

This year’s IWD theme focuses on accelerating action for gender equality. We encourage you to take part in an IWD event within your community and continue supporting women in the arts throughout the year.