The Manitoba Museum, previously the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature, is a human and natural history museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, as well as the province's largest, not-for-profit centre for heritage and science education."ABOUT US." Manitoba Museum. Retrieved 2021 January 9.
Located close to City Hall, the museum was designed in 1965 by Herbert Henry Gatenby Moody of Moody and Moore. Including its Planetarium and Science Gallery exhibit, the museum focuses on collecting, researching, and sharing Manitoba's human and natural heritage, culture, and environment.
The Hudson's Bay Company donated its historic three-centuries-old collection (and supporting funds) to the museum in 1994, becoming the largest corporate donation ever received by the museum.
History
Foundations (1879–1932) In 1879, the Historical and Scientific Society of Manitoba officially began to collect and preserve its heritage at some unknown location.
In the early 1890s, E. Thompson Seton wrote about the Manitoba Museum, which was reportedly housed in the basement of Winnipeg's City Hall.
Though, as of 1900, there was no public museum in Winnipeg, there were significant private collectors: from 1911 to the early 1920s, material from their collections was exhibited in the Exposition Building of the former Winnipeg Industrial Bureau at Main Street and Water. The present museum holds some of these collections although most were dispersed.
In 1932, the Natural History Society of Manitoba, the Winnipeg Board of Trade, and the Auditorium Commission founded the Manitoba Museum Association.
The volunteer museum (1932–1954) The Manitoba Museum officially opened its doors on 15 December 1932 in the newly built Winnipeg Civic Auditorium (now the Archives of Manitoba Building) on Memorial Boulevard alongside the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG). The museum remained in that location with the WAG until 1967. Critical support for outreach programs and exhibits came from the Carnegie Corporation and Junior League.
Professors at the University of Manitoba, formerly the Manitoba Agriculture College, played significant roles in the museum's development. The museum was run by volunteer honorary curators, with assistance from other volunteers and a small staff.
As the museum grew in acquisitions and attendance, the need for an expanded facility became critical. So, in 1954, the Board began planning a new institution, which would reflect the values of the time, consulting extensively with the American Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium.
Funding came in large part from federal project sources designed to create new Canadian cultural facilities for the 1967 Canadian Centennial commemoration. Centennial museum (1964–1972)
In March 1964, the Manitoba Museum Association, which operated the museum, proposed the construction of a new museum and planetarium to the Government of Manitoba, headed by Premier Duff Roblin. The proposal argued that Manitoba needed a modern museum that would interpret the province's natural environment, history, industry and culture through research and public education rather than simply displaying collections of specimens and artifacts. It stated:
The following year, in 1965, provincial legislation dissolved the unincorporated Manitoba Museum Association and created two successor organizations, the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature and the Manitoba Planetarium. Both became part of the planned Manitoba Centennial Centre, one of several provincial cultural institutions established to commemorate the centennial of Canada in 1967 and the centennial of Manitoba in 1970.
As plans for the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature advanced, the institution transitioned from a volunteer-run organization to a professional one. Paid curatorial positions replaced volunteer curators, who became members of the Museum Advisory Council. H. David Hemphill became managing director, serving from 1970 to 1988. During 1968 and 1969, as construction neared completion, the museum's collections were placed in storage before being transferred to the museum's new building. Construction ultimately cost CA$3,548,700.
The Manitoba Planetarium became the first part of the complex to open when Lieutenant Governor Richard Spink Bowles officially inaugurated it on 15 May 1968. Two years later, on 15 July 1970, Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the museum's first galleries, the Orientation and Grasslands galleries, as part of Manitoba's centennial celebrations. The collections assembled by the earlier Manitoba Museum formed the foundation of the new institution.
In July 1972, the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature and the Manitoba Planetarium were formally integrated into a single organization.
Expansion and renewal (1972–present)
Following the integration of the museum and planetarium in 1972, the Manitoba Museum gradually expanded its permanent exhibitions. The museum initially opened with two galleries in 1970. Over the next three decades, it added the Earth History Gallery in 1973, the Urban Gallery in 1974, the Arctic and Subarctic Gallery in 1976, and the Boreal Forest Gallery in 1980. By 2003, the opening of the Parklands / Mixed-Woods Gallery completed the museum's original gallery plan.
While continuing to expand its exhibitions, the museum also expanded its organization and facilities during the 1990s. In December 1996, the Manitoba Museum Foundation was established as an independent charitable foundation, and the institution formally adopted the name The Manitoba Museum in 1997. At the same time, the museum constructed a new east wing to house the Hudson's Bay Company Museum Collection and research facilities. The wing opened in 1998, and two years later, in 2000, the Hudson's Bay Company Gallery opened to the public following the company's 1994 donation of its collection.
Entering the 21st century, the museum continued to renew its permanent galleries. The Science Gallery opened in 2008, replacing the former Touch the Universe Gallery. Beginning in 2017, the museum undertook a capital renewal program that expanded Alloway Hall, renewed the Nonsuch Gallery and Boreal Forest Corridor, created the Winnipeg Gallery in 2019, and renewed the Welcome Gallery before opening the Prairies Gallery in 2021. By 2021, the project had also upgraded the museum's building systems and visitor facilities.
Architecture
Site The Manitoba Museum occupies a prominent site at 190 Rupert Avenue in downtown Winnipeg, at the corner of Rupert Avenue and Main Street. It forms part of the Manitoba Centennial Centre, a provincial cultural complex constructed between 1968 and 1970 to commemorate the centennials of Canada (1967) and Manitoba (1970). The complex also includes the Centennial Concert Hall and the Manitoba Planetarium.
The museum stands opposite Winnipeg City Hall and beside Steinkopf Gardens, a landscaped public space named for provincial cabinet minister Maitland Steinkopf, who oversaw development of the Centennial Centre. Pedestrian walkways and below-grade connections link the museum with the planetarium, concert hall and other facilities within the Centennial Centre.
Design The Manitoba Museum was designed in the Modernist style as part of the Manitoba Centennial Centre, a provincially funded cultural complex developed between 1965 and 1970. The museum was designed by the architectural firms Green Blankstein Russell and Associates, Moody Moore Whenham and Partners, and Smith Carter Searle Associates. Construction was carried out in stages over approximately two years, with the Manitoba Planetarium opening in 1968 and the museum galleries following in 1970.
The museum shares a common architectural vocabulary with the other Centennial Centre buildings through its use of Tyndall stone, exposed aggregate concrete and bronze-coloured metal framing. Its low, horizontal exhibition halls are complemented by a six-storey tower, while the adjoining copper-clad dome of the planetarium provides a contrasting architectural form. Together, the buildings maintain the material palette used throughout the Centennial Centre.
The museum's principal entrance opens into a spacious lobby finished with terrazzo floors, Tyndall stone walls and decorative metal ceiling screens. From the lobby, visitors descend to the lower level, which houses the Manitoba Planetarium and Science Gallery and connects to the Centennial Concert Hall and underground parking. Beyond the lobby, the museum's permanent galleries occupy the main exhibition spaces within the building.
Expansion The Manitoba Museum has undergone several major building additions over the five decades since opening in 1970. Its first major addition came four years after the museum opened, when the Nonsuch Gallery was completed in 1974 to house the full-size replica of the Nonsuch, the 17th-century ship whose voyage to Hudson Bay led to the founding of the Hudson's Bay Company. Because the gallery was built around the ship, the replica remains a permanent feature of the museum.
More than 20 years later, the museum added Alloway Hall in 1995 to provide space for travelling exhibitions. Designed by Smith Carter Architects and Engineers Inc., the addition occupied much of the museum's original courtyard and Main Street entranceway.
The museum expanded again over a two-year period between 1996 and 1998 with the construction of a new east wing to house the Hudson's Bay Company Museum Collection and research facilities. The wing officially opened in September 1998, while the Hudson's Bay Company Gallery opened to the public on 2 May 2000, following the company's decision in 1994 to designate the museum as the permanent home for its historic collection.
In 2017, Alloway Hall underwent a major expansion, doubling the exhibition space to . The CA$5.3 million project introduced new lighting systems and -high windows overlooking Steinkopf Gardens and the Manitoba Centennial Centre.
Museum galleries
With more than 2.9 million artifacts and specimens, the Manitoba Museum houses collections that reflect the human and natural history of Manitoba, shared with visitors through nine interpretive galleries.
Welcome Gallery The Welcome Gallery occupies the space originally opened on 15 July 1970 as the museum's Orientation and Grasslands galleries. More than 50 years later, it was renewed in 2021 as part of the museum's four-year, CA$20.5 million Bringing Our Stories Forward capital renewal project. The renovation retained one of the museum's oldest exhibits while introducing new interpretation developed in partnership with Indigenous communities.
The gallery's centrepiece is the museum's original Red River buffalo hunt diorama, featuring a Métis hunter on horseback pursuing a herd of bison. Wildlife artist Clarence Tillenius created the diorama between 1963 and June 1970, spending more than five years researching and painting the scene before it was completed just weeks before the museum opened. It has remained one of the museum's signature exhibits ever since. During the 2021 renovation, the diorama was preserved while the surrounding space was redesigned to introduce visitors to the museum and its permanent galleries.
New exhibits, developed in partnership with the Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba, feature treaty medals, ceremonial pipes and pipe bags associated with the Numbered Treaties. An animated projection traces 18,000 years of Manitoba's history, while an introductory display case presents representative artifacts and specimens from the museum's eight remaining permanent galleries.
Earth History Gallery
Opened in 1973, the Earth History Gallery explores more than two billion years of Manitoba's geological history through fossils, minerals, rocks and immersive exhibits. The gallery begins with displays of Precambrian rocks, minerals and crystals from the Canadian Shield before examining the tropical seas that later covered much of the province.