Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
A 17-foot dragon. That is what your kids are going to lose their minds over first, before they even understand that the building around it just went through a nearly
So here is what is actually happening at 400 Quail Rd. in Longmont. The Longmont Museum has been dark for more than a year. Galleries closed. Construction fences up. The kind of closure where you drive past and wonder if it is ever coming back the way you remember it. Well, it is coming back bigger. Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026, the doors open again with a free Grand Reopening Celebration running 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., kicking off with a 9 a.m. ribbon-cutting.
Free. All day. That word matters when you are talking about hauling a family up from Denver or Boulder for a fall Saturday. This is a marquee day trip, and it does not cost you a dime to walk in.
Let me put the numbers in front of you, because this was not a paint-and-carpet refresh. The expansion added 70% more public gallery space. The capital campaign behind it raised
The centerpiece for the grown-ups is the new 4,000-square-foot Bill Stewart Feature Gallery. Here is why that space is a big deal. It is built to rotate art and history exhibits roughly every eight months, which means the museum can now pull in larger traveling shows that used to skip right past the Front Range on their way to bigger cities. This is the part people miss. A gallery that size changes what kind of art shows up in Longmont at all.
And the first one out of the gate is not a warm-up act.
The inaugural feature exhibition is "Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Portrait," running Oct. 17 through Jan. 31. We are talking 98 rare photographs and personal letters pulled from Kahlo's private collection. Not reproductions of the famous paintings you have seen on a hundred tote bags. The private stuff. The photos and the letters. The intimate version of one of the most recognizable artists of the last century, and you can see it forty minutes north of Denver.
Running right alongside it is a companion show, "Women Artists: Four Centuries of Creativity," open Oct. 17 through Jan. 24. Original works from Rosa Bonheur, Sonia Delaunay, Käthe Kollwitz, Louise Nevelson and Françoise Gilot. Four centuries of women who made art when the world mostly was not asking them to. That is a serious lineup for a suburban museum, if you ask me.
Okay, back to the kids, because this is where the whole day earns its keep.
There is a brand new permanent children's exhibit called DreamLab, and it lives in Lila's Children's Gallery. This is all hands-on. There is a Dragon Sky Castle, which is where that 17-foot dragon lives. There is a Lilypad Landing. There is a Deep Sea Diner. Honestly, that last one sounds like a danger zone for my attention span, never mind a seven-year-old's.
Here is a small human detail worth knowing. Lila's Children's Gallery is named for Lila Stewart, who along with her husband Bill was a local business leader and a longtime supporter of the museum. The children's space itself used to be the 2,300-square-foot history gallery. So the room where Longmont told its own story got converted into the room where the next generation of Longmont kids builds theirs. There is something kind of nice about that.
Museum Director Erik Mason put it plainly. The reopening, he said, is "about so much more than a bigger building." And you can tell that is the actual mission here, not a press-release line. Between the Kahlo photos, the women artists, and a permanent kids' wonderland under one roof, this is a museum trying to be a full day for a whole family, not just a quiet hour of looking at things behind glass.
If you are going Oct. 17, plan around the guided tours. The museum is running tours of the new spaces during two activity blocks, 10:45 to 11:45 a.m. and again 1 to 2 p.m. Get there for the 9 a.m. ribbon-cutting, let the kids burn energy in DreamLab, then catch a tour when the little ones need a reset.
One more thing that flew under the radar. The outdoor Stewart Family Courtyard was redone in an earlier phase and reopened back in summer 2025 with a new stage and twice the space for concerts and events. So the campus you are visiting now is the finished picture, indoors and out.
Here is the real story on this. Northern Colorado does not get a lot of days where a rare international photo show, a four-century survey of women artists, and a 17-foot dragon all land in the same free building on the same Saturday. Oct. 17. 400 Quail Rd. Bring the kids. Buckle up.