The main goal of the GlueX experiment at Jefferson Lab is to search for exotic hybrid mesons as evidence of gluonic excitations, in an effort to understand confinement in QCD. The key features of this compelling physics program will be presented together with an overview of the detector, focusing on the electromagnetic barrel calorimeter (BCAL) that is modeled after the KLOE EmCal. The experiment is now in the construction phase with data taking expected in 2015.