One of Canada's most famous museums has reopened after an 18-month upgrade, featuring a “cutting-edge” base isolation that can withstand a one-in-2,500-year earthquake.
this Museum of Anthropology The new campus of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver will reopen to the public later this week with two new exhibits and a $40 million upgrade to the building that originally opened in 1976.
Jay Hiscox, director of UBC Facilities Project Services, said the renovation was challenging because of the “unconventional” design by renowned architect Arthur Erickson, and adding new supports would “complicate the building and lose its essence.”
Officials say this is the first time a Canadian museum has been retrofitted using base isolation technology, which uses motion joints at the base of a building to limit the transfer of ground displacements into the building structure.
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In 2017, the museum was prioritized for a seismic upgrade, and director Susan Rowley said they took the opportunity to update the space by adding new exhibits while repositioning Indigenous artifacts as part of a “living, vibrant sovereign culture.”
One of the new exhibits, titled “Seen, Heard,” focuses on Indigenous peoples and their culture in public spaces during Canada’s colonial period.
“We’re all thinking about reconciliation and decolonization and what that means and trying to understand that history, especially since for many of us, that’s the history of the land we live in, but we didn’t grow up knowing that history,” Rowley said. “It’s about trying to understand what we don’t hear? Why don’t we hear it?”
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