Blog & News

Led by professional museum conservator Tara Fraser, this workshop explores what causes deterioration in our collections and how to prevent it, including information on the proper materials and techniques needed for handling, preserving and storing family photographs, documents, heirlooms, and other precious items.

Watch the video here.

Daniel Marshall is one of British Columbia’s most-prominent historians, having spent decades chronicling the province’s past. His academic and popular histories have played a key role in shaping today’s understanding of the origins of British Columbia.

Marshall curated a 2015 Royal BC Museum exhibit on the gold rush and also co-hosted The Canyon War: An Untold Story, an award-winning documentary that brought new light to a pivotal conflict between Indigenous peoples and heavily armed American miners in the Fraser Canyon.

Marshall has now published a new book called Untold Tales of Old British Columbia. The Current spoke to Marshall about how the practice of history has changed over the last 40 years.

Read the full interview from The Current here.

Discover one of the most mysterious and unique stone monuments in the world and what it meant to the people who built it with Stonehenge. The exhibition features 400+ ancient artifacts, including the burial belongings of the Stonehenge and Amesbury archers, both of which have never been seen before in North America. Packed with archaeological insight and cutting-edge scientific research, Stonehenge explores this iconic World Heritage Site.

Working from what remains of the world’s only linteled henge, archaeologists have studied the people and communities who built Stonehenge 4,500-5,000 years ago. Learn about how these stones were transported incredible distances, shaped and jointed, and set into a vast landscape in which people have gathered for millennia.

For more information, visit the RBCM website.

Grace Eiko Thomson, a museum curator and author who covered the Japanese Canadian experience, passed away at the age of 90 on July 11th, 2024.

Thomson was the founding curator of the Japanese Canadian National Museum, now known as the Nikkei National Museum in Burnaby, B.C.

The National Association of Japanese Canadians confirmed in a statement that Thomson died peacefully at her home in Winnipeg.

Read the full tribute to Thomson from the CBC.

Historian Eric Andersen, and Diane Mitchell on behalf of the Átl'ḵa7tsem / Howe Sound Biosphere Region, talk about the past, present and future of this corner of our world. Diane opens Howe Sound’s geological history and concludes with a look into the future, a future dependent on the people who make their home here. Eric talks about the region's history, with a focus on the economic and commercial use which flourished thanks to the unique natural attributes of Átl'ḵa7tsem/Howe Sound.

Watch the full video here.

The Princeton and District Museum and Archives Society has made available a digital version of Susan Allison's book, In-Cow-Mas-Ket. This book, published in 1900, recounts many of the First Nations oral histories that she was told as a young settler in the Similkameen Valley, in her own poetic style.

This volume surfaced during their processing of the massive Rev. Dr. J.C. Goodfellow collection and was dedicated to him by Susan Allison in 1929. The digitization was done in-house by Neal Dangerfield of the Princeton Museum. 

Access In-Cow-Mas-Ket here.

From August 9th to September 20th, 2024, the Nelson Museum will host the touring reproduction of Carey Newman's powerful exhibition, The Witness Blanket.

Seemingly disconnected remnants of clothing, crumbling buildings, and fragmented cultures are woven together into a blanket, designed to shine light on the Indian Residential School system that connects them, and stand as a monument to the resiliency and strength of those who survived them. 

Inspired by a woven blanket, Witness Blanket is a large-scale work of art created by master carver Carey Newman, containing hundreds of items reclaimed from residential schools, churches, government buildings, and traditional and cultural structures from across Canada.  

Visit the Nelson Museum's website here.

Learn more about The Witness Blanket travelling exhibit here.

Retired Vancouver nurses Elizabeth Kirkwood and Kathleen Murphy reminisce about their student nursing days and their careers working in the Heather Pavilion at the Vancouver General Hospital. Both women play an active role in ensuring the preservation of the Heather Pavilion built in 1906 as the first building of the Vancouver General Hospital/

Watch the full video here.

The Okanagan Print Triennial offers visitors a fascinating glimpse into the global printmaking community. This open, juried show is dedicated to showcasing the creative forays made in printmaking across Canada and beyond, at a time when experimentation dominates and traditional practices and processes are challenged. This year, Okanagan Print Triennial will feature such a diversity of style and subject matter that visitors can look forward to leaving the exhibition with a true appreciation of contemporary printmaking.

The Okanagan Print Triennial was initiated in 2009 by Kelowna-based printmaker Briar Craig, and supported by the Kelowna Art Gallery, the Vernon Public Art Gallery, and the University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus. The winner of the 2024 Triennial will be given a solo exhibition at the Kelowna Art Gallery in 2027.

The exhibit runs until October 27th. Learn more about the Kelowna Art Gallery here.

"Last week a major heritage site in British Columbia was moments away from being destroyed by a wildfire and was saved by the herculean effort of the B.C. Wildfire Service and site staff, new fire breaks, and a miraculous last-second shift in the winds.

Elsewhere in the province, art galleries and museums in central B.C. are opening their doors for free to evacuees displaced by wildfires in Alberta.

Each day museum, gallery, and heritage workers and volunteers are going to work while waiting to hear if they will be forced to evacuate their sites, homes, and communities.

It has never been a more dangerous time for B.C.’s museums, galleries, and heritage sites — and this danger takes a significant toll on the people who devote their lives to safeguarding our irreplaceable cultural heritage."

Read the full article by Ryan Hunt, Executive Director of the BC Museums Association, here.