Canadian Museum for Human Rights announces new exhibits for 2026, extension for Love in a Dangerous Time

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) today announced the extension of its blockbuster exhibit, Love in a Dangerous Time: Canada’s LGBT Purge, until fall 2026, as well as several new exhibits that are coming soon as a result of the Museum’s plan to renew the content in its core galleries.

New content in development for the core galleries for 2026 and beyond includes At the Knees of Our Ancestors, telling the history of Black Canadians from slavery until present day; Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present, recounting the personal experiences of Palestinian Canadians from the Nakba in 1948 until today; and Inclusion for All, a new exhibit about disability rights.

“Last year we celebrated 10 years as the national museum for human rights. This year, we are kicking off our plans for our next decade focusing on new content and core gallery renewal,” CMHR CEO Isha Khan said at the Museum’s Annual Public Meeting (APM). “Our mandate is to promote dialogue and a better understanding of human rights and to ensure that Canadians see their stories in our galleries.”

In addition to core gallery renewal, a new temporary exhibition about the Yazidi Genocide, Nobody’s Listening, will open in 2027 and a major exhibition about the human rights impacts of climate change is in the works for 2029. Just last month, the Museum opened a new temporary exhibition, Broken Promises: The Dispossession of Japanese Canadians.

Khan said the extension of Love in a Dangerous Time (LIADT) until fall 2026 will provide the CMHR with the opportunity to continue its popular education programs about a little-known chapter in Canadian history where members of the 2SLGBTQI+ community were harassed and fired from their jobs in the Canadian Armed Forces, RCMP and federal public service. After it is finished its run at the CMHR, the blockbuster exhibition will travel to other major museums. It will join two smaller pop-up exhibits about the LGBT Purge, which have been criss-crossing the country and are expected to keep touring to smaller venues for several years to come.

Last year’s launch of LIADT is one of the highlights of the CMHR’s 2024–25 Annual Report, which was also released at today’s APM. Other exhibition highlights from the past year include taking the blockbuster Beyond the Beat: Music of Resistance and Change to British Columbia after its successful debut and accompanying concert series at the CMHR. The Museum also opened Dimensions in Testimony, a new feature in the Holocaust Gallery that gives visitors and students an opportunity to talk with a survivor.

In addition, this past year featured the return of Carey Newman’s Witness Blanket, an exhibition about residential schools, to its permanent home at the CMHR. Two Witness Blanket replicas continued to tour the country to help ensure this important content reaches smaller communities and venues. The annual report also noted the continued expansion of the Museum’s education offerings including its signature program, Be an Upstander, as well as a new suite of in-gallery animations designed to help visitors actively engage with exhibition content.

“Our work is a balance of providing exhibitions, education and public programs in our galleries while also increasing our national reach through our travelling exhibits and virtual learning opportunities,” Khan said. “We are continually exploring new ways of sharing human rights stories that help preserve and shape Canadian culture, heritage and identity.”