Museum of Anthropology staff work on installing displays after renovations in Vancouver, on June 10. The Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at UBC will reopen its doors to the public on June 13 at 5 p.m., following an 18-month closure.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
One hundred years after Arthur Erickson’s birth, an Erickson masterpiece is beginning its new life. The Museum of Anthropology, the Canadian architect’s 1976 stunner on the campus of the University of British Columbia, reopens Thursday after groundbreaking seismic upgrades. The $40-million transformation was born out of safety concerns – but allowed museum officials to conceive a meaningful reimagining.
Not that visitors will necessarily notice. Architects, engineers and builders went to great lengths to not just preserve the architect’s vision, but to essentially replicate it so that Erickson’s concrete-and-glass Great Hall, home to grand totem poles and other magnificent Northwest Coast Indigenous objects, would basically look the same. However, almost invisibly, it is a fundamentally different space.
Erickson, who was born in Vancouver on June 14, 1924, drew on Indigenous design to create the museum, and was inspired by the objects that would live in the space. He wanted to ensure they felt at home and that they – not the building – would be centrestage.
The building was meant to be a backdrop, says architect Nick Milkovich, who worked with Erickson for 40 years – including on the original MOA project – and was lead architect for this rebuild.
The project saw cutting-edge seismic upgrades to the museum's Great Hall, coupled with the revitalization and reinterpretation of displays of Northwest Coast Indigenous carvings, poles, weavings and other works from the past and present.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
The plan was to do just that: rebuild Erickson’s design, with upgraded technology to protect its precious artifacts – and the people who visit them – from earthquakes.
“We didn’t spend a lot of time guessing what would Arthur think,” says Jay Hiscox, UBC’s director of project services and the MOA project lead. “We really [asked] ourselves: What does this building need? What does this place need? We knew we’d be faithful and Arthur would recognize that.” Hiscox, an architect, also worked with Erickson.
“I think he’d be proud,” said Milkovich, of Erickson, his former professor, boss and colleague. “And say ‘They didn’t screw it up.’ ”
Analysis conducted in 2017 showed that the Great Hall – a massive space with no walls or bracing elements – was at seismic risk.
During drilling to test the Hall’s concrete columns, they found that they were hollow – a sobering shock, and a turning point. To fix the building, and have it look the same, they would have to knock it down.
The decision was made to rebuild it using base isolation technology, only the second building in Canada to do so, Hiscox says.
Erickson’s Great Hall was demolished. For the new building, a crawl space was created underneath and base isolators – sort of like rubber cushions – installed, which the structure now sits on top of.
Susan Rowley, director of the Museum of Anthropology, shows how a gap in carpeting is a clue to work done to make the rebuilt Great Hall structurally isolated to protect it from earthquakes.
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The Great Hall is now completely structurally isolated – separated from the ground and from the rest of the building, at the floor, wall and skylights. There are steel plates underneath the carpeted floors, up the walls and on the roof, covering the expansion gap created in the rebuild.
The Hall’s signature glass curtain wall was replaced with far superior glass. It is water white – therefore clear, with no green tinge like its predecessor – and UV-protected.
The skylights were also replaced. Previously acrylic, they are now triple-glazed glass, but still curved, and no longer leaking. “It’s actually a miracle it lasted 45 years without real damage to the artifacts,” said Hiscox, looking up at the new skylights. “Rain buckets were a fixture of this place.”
The structure is designed to withstand a one-in-2,500-year earthquake event in such a way that the glass and frame will move and flex, slowly, up to about 35 centimetres in any direction. “A dance,” Milkovich calls it.
The initial estimate for the project was about three months, but that kept increasing for reasons including labour and supply-chain issues. Ultimately, it took 18 months. The delayed opening coincided with Erickson’s centennial – serendipity, says MOA director Susan Rowley.
The museum took that as an opportunity to reimagine and reframe the space, working with an Indigenous advisory committee, Indigenous communities and families and artists.
For the objects’ removal during the work, Joe David, who made Cedar Man, asked that blindfolds be placed over the eyes of the figure and the frog in his belly so that they wouldn’t bear witness to the deconstruction of their home, an upsetting scene.
Museum of Anthropology staffer Emilee Morrish carefully works to restore a houseboard by artist Susan Point after renovations.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
The Hall cleared, Hiscox observed that “the building without the artifacts had lost all its power. It’s this incredible confluence of this place, the artifacts, the architecture that makes it sing. To see that raw was very instructive.”
When the totem poles were returned to the rebuilt Great Hall, families connected to the objects were invited in.
The first to be installed was The Whaler’s Pole by Nuu-chah-nulth artist Art Thompson, who died in 2003. The totem had previously been outside on campus and the tip of the whaler’s harpoon had practically decomposed. Thompson’s grandson, Ernie George Jr., carved a new tip.
“When it was time for the pole to go up, the family came in and honoured the young man for his work,” says Rowley.
Across the Hall is the Skim-sim and Will-a-daugh pole carved around 1870 by Haesemhliyawn from Gitanyow, the pole of Chief Wii Xá, Gilt Winth, Wolf clan. When the woodpecker atop the pole was mounted, a family member was invited onto the lift for the reinstallation.
On Thursday, the public will be invited into the space for the first time since January, 2023.
Entering MOA’s Great Hall, descending the ramp toward the light, has been one of the great Vancouver – great Canadian – experiences since the museum opened almost 50 years ago.
It still is – and in fact more so, with meaningful curatorial changes in what is now called the Pacific Northwest Galleries. The wall labels, to begin with, include quotes from dozens of Indigenous people.
Museum of Anthropology staff Heidi Swierenga, at left, and Teija Dedi, at right, work on installing displays.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
As you enter at the top of the ramp, a new installation to your left connects a diverse assortment of canoe paddles from different Nations, artists and time frames – from pre-1864 to 2023. They appear to be mid-paddle, propelling you down into the main space, as glorious as ever.
Hovering over as you enter the larger space is a 12.8-metre Musqueam cedar house-board, which was a roof plank, then a wall plank and then, in 1955, presented as a wedding gift to an anthropologist who married into the family. In 1977, it was donated to MOA, but was put into storage. Now, it has a new home.
Further, by the windows, a long red banner hangs, marking the absence of a Haida mortuary pole, which was returned to Haida Gwaii in 2018. “We could have put something else there, but we wanted to specifically demonstrate that museums are not about storerooms where things go to die,” says Rowley. “They are part of a journey.”
Two Susan Point house poles, which had previously been outside, now stand in front of the windows, facing the visitor coming down the ramp – a decision made in consultation with Point and her Musqueam community.
“Every day has been a problem-solving adventure,” said Heidi Swierenga, senior conservator, as she worked with two others to install a Kwakwaka’wakw feast dish lid. She said this work has been a great privilege – an opportunity to learn from these monumental carvings, and to protect them.
“Everything is safe now. It feels really, really great.”