Royal British Columbia Museum

Royal British Columbia Museum Corporation

Established	1886
Location	Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
Type	provincial history museum and archives
Collection size	over 7 million
Website	www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/

Founded in 1886, the Royal British Columbia Museum consists of The Province of British Columbia's natural and human history museum as well as the British Columbia Provincial Archives. The museum is located in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The "Royal" title was approved by Queen Elizabeth II and bestowed by HRH Prince Philip in 1987, to coincide with a Royal tour of that year. The museum merged with the British Columbia Provincial Archives in 2003.

The Royal BC Museum includes three permanent galleries: modern history, natural history, and local First Nations’ history. The museum’s collections are comprised of approximately 7 million objects, including artifacts, natural history specimens, and archival records. The natural history collections have 750,000 records of specimens almost exclusively from BC and neighbouring states, provinces, or territories. The collections are divided into eight disciplines: Entomology, Botany, Paleontology, Ichthyology, Invertebrate Zoology, Herpetology, Mammals, and Ornithology. Bryophytes and Algae are not well represented. The museum also hosts touring exhibits, and previous exhibits have included artifacts related to the RMS Titanic, Leonardo da Vinci, Egyptian artifacts, and Genghis Khan. The museum's IMAX theatre shows educational films as well as commercial entertainment.

The museum is in Victoria's Inner Harbour, between the Empress Hotel and the Legislature Buildings. The museum anchors the Royal BC Museum Cultural Precinct, a surrounding area with historical sites and monuments, including Thunderbird Park. There was also a summer satellite gallery at the Wing Sang building (51 E. Pender) in Vancouver’s Chinatown, opened in June 2012. The overarching exhibition of the summer satellite gallery was "Curious," made up of four installations: Intimate Glimpses, Artifact/ Artifiction, Magic Lantern and Bottled Beauty.

On 26 March 2012 Jack Lohman was appointed CEO of the Royal BC Museum, and he received the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) Honour on 16 June 2012. Various groups assist with the development, success, and maintenance of the Royal BC Museum. These include volunteers, who number over 500 and outnumber the Royal BC Museum staff 4 to 1 ; the Royal BC Museum Foundation (formerly Friends of the Royal BC Museum Foundation), a non-profit organization created in 1970 to support the Royal BC Museum financially and to assist its work by forming links within the community; Security Services, responsible for risk management, emergency response, security services, and business continuity expertise; and Property Management and Operations, who focus on sustainability, recycling, and environment control within the museum.

Permanent galleries

The natural history gallery on the second floor displays life-sized displays of the diverse geography of the province (such as the Fraser River delta, and prehistoric life (including a woolly mammoth), and a simulated journey to the depths of the ocean. More recently, a section on climate was added, including information on the effects of modern climate change.

The modern history gallery on the third floor begins with "Century Hall" which displays collections of artifacts of the 20th century. Visitors pass into a replica of a cobblestone streetscape of early 20th-century Victoria (with silent movie theatre, a hotel, a train station, old automobiles, and Chinatown). The display shifts to a tour of early forestry, fishing, and mining industries (including a mine shaft and water wheel), and then a history of exploration (that includes a model of the original Fort Victoria and a large scale replica of Captain George Vancouver's ship the HMS Discovery.

The First People's gallery on the third floor is a First Nations exhibit, portraying life before and after contact with Europeans. The gallery includes a collection of masks, totem poles, and a Kwakwaka'wakw longhouse built by Henry Hunt, and grandsons, Tony Hunt and Richard Hunt. The gallery is criticized by indigenous scholars for its portrayal of First Nations people, and its use of controversial images and film from Edward Curtis.

Affiliations

The Museum is affiliated with: CMA, CHIN, and Virtual Museum of Canada.

Images

• 
  Thunderbird Park with the museum in the background
• 
  The popular woolly mammoth in the natural history gallery
• 
  The recreated water wheel in the modern history gallery
• 
  Stó:lō people fishing with traditional dipnets on the Fraser River
• 
  Stó:lō woman with a cedar basket
• 
  Haida totem pole in Thunderbird Park
• 
  Other Haida totems in Thunderbird Park
• 
  A totem pole on the grounds of the Royal BC Museum
• 
  Okanagan/Syilx family portrait
• 
  A totem pole located outside the Royal BC Museum
• 
  Historical ladies' accessories
• 
  A recreated underwater exhibit at the Royal BC Museum
• 
  A car in a recreated garage at the Royal BC Museum
• 
  The main entrance of the Royal BC Museum
• 
  Totem poles in front of the Royal BC Museum
• 
  Several totem poles in Thunderbird Park

See also

• List of Canadian organizations with royal patronage

External links

• Royal BC Museum
• Royal BC Museum Cultural Precinct
• BC Archives