Jeff Spalding moved from Halifax's Art Gallery of Nova Scotia to the Glenbow in Calgary just one year ago. (Glenbow Museum)

Jeff Spalding, who moved from Nova Scotia to a high profile appointment at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary a year ago, has stepped down abruptly as chief executive of the museum.

The Glenbow has appointed a successor just as quickly — an insider, Kirstin Evenden, who has been vice-president of access, collections and exhibits at the Glenbow.

Spalding, formerly the dynamic director and chief curator of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, was named president and CEO at the Glenbow in December 2007.

At the time, he said he wanted to raise the profile of the institution, which is a combination of a historical museum, an art gallery and archives.

Spalding's move to the Glenbow was believed to have caught the attention of philanthropists, who were interested in donating art to the museum.

The Glenbow gave no reason for his departure in a statement issued Friday.

"It didn't work out with Jeff at Glenbow," Lauchlan Currie, chair of the Glenbow board of governors, told CBC News. He refused to say why Spalding and the Glenbow parted ways.

Evenden has been at the Glenbow since 1993, serving as director of knowledge management, manager of new media initiatives and as a curator.

She developed the Glenbow Connections to Collections series, in which artists were invited to explore Glenbow's collections and create work based on their explorations.