THE BLOCKBUSTER EFFECT - DESIGN DETAILS: THE MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY

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Museum of Anthropology

The Great Hall inside the newly renovated Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. PHOTO: Goh Iromoto.

THE BLOCKBUSTER EFFECT - DESIGN DETAILS: THE MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY

BY: Jill Sawyer

Research and education form the foundation of recent upgrades to the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. Now, with a $2.5-million grant from the Audain Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Museum will be able to further support its mandate for building and displaying important public shows.

With its official January, 2010 opening, the MOA will complete a $55.5-million revitalization that refreshed its grand exhibition hall and other exhibition and storage spaces, and built a cutting-edge educational outreach program that will further anthropological research partnerships around the world.

Because the Museum has such a heavily weighted emphasis on research and scholarship, many of its recently renovated spaces and additions support educational programs — including research labs, an oral history language lab, and spaces designed for researchers to physically access artifacts and objects. The public spaces, primarily the newly opened Great Hall, will feature the large-scale Northwest Coast art objects and artifacts that are the cornerstone of the MOA’s collection.

Plans are also in place to increase the amount of public programming in exhibitions of art, and research into indigenous cultures from around the world. A new gallery, The Audain Gallery, will add more than 5,000 square feet for travelling exhibitions that until now couldn’t be hosted in Vancouver.