Simon Fraser University welcomes new arts museum at Burnaby, B.C., campus

SFU will open the doors to its new arts museum, the Marianne and Edward Gibson Art Museum, in September.

B.C.’s Simon Fraser University is taking a new creative direction with the opening of its first, purpose-built arts museum, set to be welcomed to the institute’s Burnaby campus this fall.

The Marianne and Edward Gibson Art Museum, opening Sept. 20, consolidates what was previously known as the SFU Galleries and will house exhibitions, performances, talks, and workshops.

Designed by Siamak Hariri of Hariri Pontarini Architects, the 12,000-square-foot space champions features that showcase a connection to nature and highlight the campus surrounds. A courtyard sits alongside the museum’s art studio, exhibition space and forum rooms, each filled with expansive windows that blurs the lines between outside and in.

“In part inspired by the intelligence of trees and their underground networks of communication and support, the Gibson is a space where art and learning come together to create a vibrant canopy of activity supported by deep connections,” says the museum’s director, Kimberly Phillips, in a release issued Wednesday.

“My desire for natural light and porosity, for bringing the outside in, stems in part from Dr. Edward Gibson’s own belief, as an urban geographer, in art’s connection to its surroundings and the unique experience of Arthur Erickson’s architecture on the Burnaby campus.”

Marianne Gibson and her late husband Edward were known for their significant contributions to arts and education at the university, with professor Edward serving as director of the former SFU Galleries from 1986 until 1997.

The facility’s inaugural exhibition, Edge Effects, will feature a combination of new works specifically commissioned for the grand opening and longer-term projects that haven’t yet been showcased. Spanning a variety of different artists, museum goers can expect to see the likes of Vancouver visual artist Liz Magor, Vancouver-based Japanese-Canadian multimedia artist Cindy Mochizuki, Nevada poet Jared Stanley and Saskatchewan-born writer and artist Lorna Brown.

The exhibition leans further into the museum’s overarching theme of blending together spaces. Its title references the ecological term “edge effect,” which describes the conditions that are created at the boundary of two or more habitats, like an estuary found between a river and an ocean.

In this vein, Gibson explores its position “at the boundary of academia and the public,” the museum says in the release.

The museum’s runnings will kick off the weekend of Sept. 20 with an arts program, a musical performance, an arts talk and the opening of an arts studio with activities and workshops for children. Programs already on the billing for autumn include workshops in clay-making and weaving.

From then on, the free-admission museum will be open Wednesday to Sunday, from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m.