Museum of Vancouver’s feature galleries to reopen with three new exhibits

The Museum of Vancouver is seen in this undated file photo. (Museum of Vancouver/Facebook)

After a months-long closure for maintenance work over the winter, the Museum of Vancouver will reopen its three feature galleries this June with a trio of fresh exhibitions.

The museum closed the galleries in September 2024 to allow for HVAC upgrades to “improve the building’s air quality,” the MoV said in a statement, while promising the rooms will be back with a bang with three exhibits that will bring a “fresh reset” to the Kitsilano facility.

The Work of Repair: Redress & Repatriation exhibition will hone in on a complex undertaking the museum has been carrying out to decolonize its work and exhibits, and repair its relationships with Indigenous communities.

Earlier this year, the museum discussed its repatriation process at length with CTV News, touching on how it began in 1974, when the remains of a Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation ancestor were returned to B.C.’s Quadra Island. The museum has gone on to return a total of 384 belongings and 59 ancestors in the years since.

The exhibition highlights the repatriation process, noting an ongoing project with the Tŝilhqot’in Nation in particular, the community engagement that has taken place, and the research that has been conducted to reconnect Indigenous belongings to their histories.

“For change to happen, it must be institution wide,” said Sharon Fortney, the museum’s senior curator of Indigenous collections, engagement and repatriation, in a statement.

“Decolonization requires us to reconsider how we do our daily work, and to examine how we can tear down barriers to access … Through this exhibition, we demonstrate how understanding our history as an institution, and how undertaking research to improve collections documentation reconnects belongings to community members. This, in turn, can lead to repatriation and the repair of relationships.”

Also gaining inspiration from the past is Deep-Seated Histories: Chairs from the Collection, a second exhibit that will bring 150 chairs out of the museum’s storage to provide visitors an insight into the evolution of Vancouver.

The various forms of seating serve as witnesses to the “layered histories” of Vancouver, said Denise Fong, curator of urban cultures at the museum, especially regarding the city’s cultural, social, and industrial growth.

“These objects connect us to Vancouver’s shifting identities – its colonial legacies, its communities of resistance, and its moments of change and innovation,” she said.

The third exhibition, Future Makers: Chairs by New Designers, complements the second by showcasing a series of chairs that have been crafted from decades-old mahogany donated to the museum.

MoV collaborated with students from the Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Wilson School of Design in the creative project it describes as being a showcase of “sustainability, design innovation and a critical reflection.”

The three feature galleries will reopen to the public June 20.