Saturday, March 29, 2008
The Vancouver Museum is a local museum located in Vanier Park, Vancouver, British Columbia. It is housed within the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre building and is the largest civic museum in Canada. The museum was formerly located in the upstairs of the old Carnegie Library and 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. 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 library on April 15th, 1905. Its current location was built as part of Canada's centennial in 1967.