Lumen took over Uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park on Saturday, September 19, from 6 to 11 p.m. The City of Waterloo said the night had more than 35 interactive installations by 50 Canadian artists. Almost all of it was gone within the week. Two works stayed. Plenum, a light-and-sound piece on Waterloo Public Square, has an end date in about three weeks. Dale Chihuly's Lapis Blue Chandelier at the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery has no end date at all.
The chandelier wasn't a loan brought in for festival night. It's now part of the Gallery's Permanent Collection, and two earlier Chihuly works were already there, both of them gifts too. Taken together, the three pieces make the Gallery on Caroline Street one of the few places in the region where you can see the full span of one glass artist's career. Admission is always free.
What Lumen Left Behind
| Work | Location | Status | On view until |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plenum by Wireframe and Audiotopie | Waterloo Public Square | World premiere presentation | October 19 or 20, 2026 |
| Lapis Blue Chandelier by Dale Chihuly | Tower Gallery, Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery | Permanent Collection | No end date; the exhibition built around it runs to January 11, 2027 |
Plenum's end date depends on which official page you read. The City of Waterloo's September 11 release and Audiotopie both say October 20. Lumen's own installation page says it stays on the Square from September 19 to October 19. To be safe, plan your visit for the weekend of October 17 and 18.
The Piece on the Square Is Here on Loan
Plenum is a collaboration between Wireframe, a Canadian public art agency, and Audiotopie, an artistic creation cooperative that works with sound in public spaces. The City lists Audiotopie as based in Montreal. Audiotopie describes Lumen as Plenum's world premiere, so Waterloo is the first place the public has seen it.
The piece has two theremin-inspired stations and three light organs. When you move your hands through the air at a station, the sound changes, and so do the rhythm and brightness of the lights. Wireframe says the sound in the Square moves among the surrounding pipes as people play. The festival's description explains the title this way:
The word plenum comes from Latin, meaning "full." In philosophy and physics, it describes a space that is never truly empty, the opposite of a void.
None of the sources list Plenum's daily operating hours for its extended run. The Lumen FAQ told festival-goers to come after sunset, which it put at 7:30 p.m. that night, because most installations need low light. The City says the Square's 22 lights come on automatically at dusk. A light organ shows up best in the dark, and sunset keeps getting earlier through October.
The Piece Indoors Is Here to Stay
The Lapis Blue Chandelier is dated 2013 and measures 221 by 140 by 124 centimetres. Its accession number, 2026.001.001, marks it as the first object the Gallery added to its collection this year. Erica and Andrew O'Born gave it to the Gallery in February 2026. It was unveiled at the Gallery's Preview in Blue fundraiser on September 18, the evening before Lumen, and it hangs twelve feet above the Tower Gallery. The City counted it among Lumen's highlights and called it a premiere.
The chandelier also hasn't always looked the way it does now. According to the Gallery, it was first set up in 2004 as a taller, icicle-like arrangement, and its current shape was conceived in 2014. The Gallery says this reflects Chihuly's openness to redesign and his view that a work doesn't need one fixed form. So the piece now hanging over the Tower Gallery is one version of a work that has changed before.
Three Gifts, Twenty-Seven Years
The chandelier is the centrepiece of Dale Chihuly: Gifted, on view from September 18, 2026, to January 11, 2027. The exhibition shows all three Chihuly works the Gallery owns. Each one arrived as a donation:
- Amber Vase, 1974–1975. Chihuly made it in Canada during a demonstration at Sheridan College, using beer bottles as material. Robert and Chris Held donated it in 1999. Robert Held, a glass artist who started out in ceramics, founded Canada's first college-level hot studio program at Sheridan in 1969.
- Blue Sky Basket Set, 2004. It comes from a series Chihuly has described as his most innovative, inspired by the soft forms of handwoven baskets made by Indigenous artists of the Northwest Coast. Winifred Shantz gave it in 2012. The Gallery calls her a positive force in its founding.
- Lapis Blue Chandelier, 2013. Gifted by Erica and Andrew O'Born in February 2026.
The Gallery says the three works together trace how the artist developed, and they show his ongoing challenge to traditional ideas about glass. In practical terms, the set runs from a vase blown from beer bottles at an Ontario college demonstration to a ceiling installation more than two metres tall. The gifts came from three different donor households over 27 years. None of the pieces was a purchase. The Gallery's announcement names the O'Borns but gives no value for the gift.
Chihuly was born in Tacoma, Washington, in 1941. The Gallery credits him with taking art glass off the pedestal and into large installations that work at the scale of a room or a building. A chandelier hanging twelve feet up shows that idea well. A vase on a plinth, two rooms away, shows where it started.
What Surrounds It Through January
The Gallery opened three more exhibitions on the same night as the Chihuly show.
- Neon Canada: The Art of Electrified Glass, September 18, 2026, to January 11, 2027, curated by Peter Flannery. Artists include Dick Averns, Robin Clason, Coley, Thrush Holmes, Kelly Mark, Roda Medhat, Will Munro and Orest Tataryn. The Gallery notes that neon has declined since 2000 as LED signs took over, and that its glow, hum and flicker still create an effect newer technology doesn't match.
- Faith Layard: Verdant Strata, September 18, 2026, to January 11, 2027. Layered vitreous enamel surfaces drawn from plants, animals and shifting landscapes.
- Purpose Built: Selections from the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery Permanent Collection, a long-term exhibition that opened September 18. It features contemporary ceramic, glass and enamel artists from across Canada.
Neon Canada fits naturally with Plenum. Both are about light you can hear. One leaves the Square in October. The other stays indoors until January.
Admission to the Gallery is always free. The Gallery's location page lists these hours: Tuesday to Friday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday 1 to 5 p.m., and closed Mondays. That page may not be up to date, so check the hours before a Sunday visit. The current-exhibitions page also lists Creature Comforts through October 8, but that show is at the Waterloo Public Library at 35 Albert Street, not at the Gallery.
After Plenum Leaves, the Square Fills Its Own Calendar
The Square doesn't go quiet once Plenum is packed up. The Uptown Waterloo BIA's Treats in the Streets runs Saturday, October 24, from 1 to 4 p.m. It includes trick-or-treating at Uptown businesses, live music and costumed characters, with more activities on Waterloo Public Square and at the BIA tent at King and William. Six days later, on Friday, October 30, the City hosts the Waterloo Vampire Hangout on the Square from 6 to 9 p.m. It's free and family-friendly, with local artists, a DJ and a Vampire Fashion Show.
Lumen draws more than 100,000 visitors to Waterloo, according to the City. This year it left one installation outside for a month and one chandelier inside for good. If you want to see both, you have until the third weekend of October. After that, only the Tower Gallery chandelier will still be there.
At Kevin, Alicia & Associates, we follow what Waterloo adds to its permanent fabric, like a donated chandelier that will hang over the Tower Gallery long after Plenum leaves the Square. If you own a home within reach of Uptown and want to know how it compares in today's market, book a property valuation with our team.
