The City of Greater Bendigo has released the new details as it puts the design and construction job out to tender.

It wants to capitalise on the gallery's soaring popularity and deal with constraints the building is now throwing up.

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The venue now draws in well over 150,000 people every year, making it second only to the National Gallery of Victoria for attendances throughout the state.

"It has a growing regional and international audience, with on average 49 per cent of visitors from Melbourne, 30 per cent local region, 10 per cent interstate and 1 per cent international," documents state.

"The success of the gallery means that it is being challenged by the physical constraints of the space within which it is working."

The council wants a new facade, a civic square and a first floor allowing flexibility for "blockbuster exhibitions" like 2008's The Golden Age of Couture or 2019's Tudors to Windsors: British Royal Portraits.

The ground floor would allow more of the gallery's collections and free exhibitions to go on show.

Commercial facilities including the shop and restaurant would be "enhanced" to be "best in class".

The council has not ruled out making the project a staged construction depending on the availability of capital.

Now in its 134^th year of operation, the art gallery has not always been such a Mecca for the art world.

The gallery came in for pointed criticism in 1934 in particular, when experts from New York's illustrious Carnegie Institute said it had a "good number" of pictures but that the walls were overcrowded.

The same report found many gallery's including Bendigo's were fire prone and underfunded.

They went as far to say authorities had a "supine indifference" to galleries outside of a handful of major cities.

Highly embarrassed art gallery personnel gathered to "express displeasure" at the report's findings, but also believed it to be a vital guide to Australia's art scene.

The meeting ended up kickstarting a broader search for funds including through the Carnegie Institute itself.

There are no such qualms about Bendigo's gallery on the international scene today.

The gallery regularly holds Australian exclusives including the most recent Mary Quant blockbuster, which was one of the institution's busier exhibitions despite lockdowns and social distancing restrictions.

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