After two years, City Gallery is (nearly) ready to welcome Wellington back
Monday, 13 July 2026
City Gallery Wellington has finished its refurbishments after being closed for more than two years, and is about to begin installing the major ticketed whole-of-gallery Cornelia Parker exhibition that will celebrate its reopening.
The gallery first closed at the end of June 2024 amid disruptive construction works in Te Ngākau Civic Square. It was then revealed parts of the gallery were vulnerable to a quake.
Since then the gallery has held satellite exhibitions at Te Papa, The Dowse, and the National Library. From August 1 it will present an exhibition at Nairn Street Cottage.
But from October 10, the gallery will finally fling open its doors to the public from its Civic Square home, tucked behind Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui Wellington Central Library, after $11.9 million plus GST was spent by the city council on its upgrading.
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“To open with something really spectacular felt like the right thing to do. People are starting to come up to the doors, they’re ready to come in,” said Charlotte Davy, the gallery’s director, on a site tour with The Post last week.
Alongside Parker’s large-scale, immersive installations and sculptures - which include an exploded garden shed, and a scaled-down replica of the sinister Bates Motel from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho - audiences will notice a slew of changes to the building.
Hanging ceilings have been removed, increasing the gallery’s sense of space; selective earthquake proofing of walls has been completed; and the building’s original architecture has been revealed, helping to honour its history as the old Wellington Central Library. (The building was converted into and opened as a gallery in 1993).
The gallery also has improved HVAC systems, and has made the decision to open late every Thursday when it reopens, so people will be able to come in at night after their work or study.
Up the staircase, contractors have filled in a hole in the floor and removed a wall, which open the landing space up.
Previously the gallery has only ever hosted ticketed shows covering access to the whole building, however the new landing means it will be able to set up a ticketing booth there to siphon the upper floor off, while keeping the downstairs free for the general public to roam.
Floors have been painted and waxed; two new skylights mean natural light now streams into previously cave-like areas; two new entrances have been put into the building’s south gallery (upstairs), creating flow; and bathrooms have been redone.
A new reading room area upstairs means people will have a direct view of a new towering aural neon sculpture by artist Sean Kerr. The work will be installed on the gallery’s terrace - which has never been used before - by April 2027.
While that sculpture will be visible from inside the gallery, it will also be visible from Harris St.
There are also changes to City Gallery’s shop. With help from Knight Associates architecture and design services, it is getting a full refit.
That area will seamlessly connect to an adjacent cafe that will open in the space previously occupied by Nikau.
And the gallery wants to experiment with having its windows open more often - a nod to its heritage aspect, and something that will help make its interiors even lighter.
When the space reopens in October, curators will announce its forward programme so Wellingtonians have a sense of what’s to come, Davy said.
Last month 5000 people came through the gallery’s doors over the course of a weekend, for a series of events dubbed Common Material that celebrated the capital’s burgeoning fashion and design industries.
Parker’s exhibition runs through March 2027. Her complex individual works will take up to two weeks each to install.
Davy said Parker’s artistic focus on destruction and reconstruction of things felt fitting - not only for the gallery’s own journey, but for Wellington more generally over the last years.
“We’re opening with an artist who takes that sense of chaos and turns it into something beautiful - and that’s where we are,” she said.
Tickets for the Cornelia Parker exhibition via Ticketmaster.