Museum of Vancouver

The Museum of Vancouver (MOV) (formerly the Vancouver Museum) is a local museum located in Vanier Park, Vancouver. The MOV is the largest civic museum in Canada. The museum was founded in 1894 and recently went through a major re-visioning process in 2008. It shares facilities with the H. R. MacMillan Space Centre.

The museum was founded by the Art, Historical, and Scientific Association of Vancouver, which formed on April 17th, 1894 with the object of cultivating "a taste for the beauties and refinements in life. The society collected curios and artifacts and displayed them in various locations until the museum opened in its first permanent location in the Carnegie Library on April 15th, 1905. Its current location was built as part of Canada's centennial in 1967. In 1968, the museum re-opened as the Centennial Museum. In 1981 the museum was again renamed the Vancouver Museum, and there was an effort to renew permanent exhibition galleries. In spring of 2009, the museum became the Museum of Vancouver, due in large part to the re-visioning process. Now, the MOV seeks to increase its relevance to Vancouverites by telling the story of the city in new and unique voices.

The museum includes in its collection artifacts collected from around the world by Vancouver residents, including a mummy purchased in Egypt during World War I, taxidermy of local game and wildlife, popular culture artifacts collected locally from the late 19th and 20th centuries, and journals written by local middle and upper class women chronicling their travels throughout the British Empire.

Exhibitions and events

You Say You Want A Revolution

Permanent exhibition

Kids searching for an alternative way of life made Vancouver the hippie capital of Canada, and Kitsilano, with its cheap housing, became freak central. Groove on Vancouver, the cool city on the...

The Gateway to the Pacific

Permanent exhibition

Everyone hyping Vancouver? Vancouver in the grip of real estate frenzy? House prices soaring, then crashing? That’s Vancouver in the early 1900s. Vancouver became a big city whose busy streets flash...