Museum of Anthropology

Architecture

The MOA’s current location, designed by Arthur Erickson Architects, opened in 1976 at the University of British Columbia. (See also Arthur Erickson; Vancouver.) The 66,000 square-foot building, set on a cliff at the tip of Point Grey, holds an unrivalled collection of Northwest Coast Indigenous Art (see Northwest Coast Indigenous Peoples in Canada). The original design featured an innovative "visible storage" system, which allowed visitors to peruse the museum's entire collection in specially designed glass and Plexiglas storage cases. The museum also included teaching and research facilities for the university. Construction of a two-storey, 48,800 square-foot extension, designed by Arthur Erickson and Stantec Architecture, featured additional space for temporary exhibitions.

Erickson’s project has been lauded for the way contemporary architectural forms harmonize and celebrate both the setting and the artifacts inside the building. The building is not a conventional museum, but rather a poetic response to the history and climate of the site that promotes the cultural importance of the First Nations. (See also First Nations in British Columbia.) The design in fact engages the architecture of cultures spread out over time and geography: the placement of the Acropolis on a hill in Athens, traditional Haida post-and-beam structures, and the torii (gates built at the entry to a shrine) used in Japanese Shinto sanctuaries. ( See also Architectural History of Indigenous Peoples in Canada.)

Erickson based the layout on a Haida waterfront village, where houses and totems provide a transition between land and sea. Erickson proposed a small pond meant to act both as a reflecting pool and to reinforce the village concept. University officials, however, concerned about the ecology of the historic Point Grey cliffs,  left the pond dry except for three occasions: it was filled once for a film shoot in 1993, again in 1997, and again on Erickson's 80th birthday in 2004. In 2010, a reflecting pool (the Yosef Wosk Reflecting Pool) was added to the grounds of the museum.

The area around the pond includes a pebbly beach, grassy mounds and forest hinterland. The landscape design, by Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, was planned as an ethnobotanical exhibition of indigenous plants and grasses used by First Nations people. (See also Traditional Plants and Indigenous Peoples in Canada.) The building also incorporates three circular concrete gun emplacements built during the Second World War. Erickson reused one as the base for a spectacular installation of The Raven and the First Man (1980), a cedar sculpture by artist Bill Reid depicting a Haida legend.

Visitors to the museum enter through a repetitive series of U-shaped precast concrete post-and-beam gates, separated by curved acrylic skylights. The visit proceeds downwards, with smaller objects displayed in low-ceilinged galleries on both sides of the passageway, to the great hall, which ends in a sleek wall of mullion-less glazing facing the sea. Inside the hall the concrete gates reappear, this time rising upwards overhead as high as 49 feet, sheltering a collection of totem poles that range from 12 to 40 feet in height. Recalling a strategy Erickson used in 1965 to design the West Vancouver residence for artists Gordon and Marion Smith (see Smith House), the dramatic overhead beams, which range from 40 to 180 feet long, are all of the same thickness; the actual structural supports are a second set of beams spanning the opposite direction to the U-shaped ones. The result is a distinctive, gracious room of great calm and serenity, filled with natural light.

Renovations

To fulfill its mandate and provide greater access to its collection, the MOA has undergone several expansion and renovation projects. In 2010, the Multiversity Galleries were added, expanding the museum’s visible storage. In 2020, the MOA began preparing for seismic upgrades. The MOA was temporarily closed in January 2023 and reopened to the public in the summer of 2024.

Collections

The MOA’s collection is comprised of approximately 50,000 ethnological objects and 535,000 archaeological objects from around the world. (See also Anthropology in Canada; Archaeology.) The museum’s collection is available online.