The Evolution of a City
Explore a bustling street in turn-of-the-century Chinatown, recline on a bungalow porch in Point Grey or discover your inner hippie at a Kitsilano commune. For years, the Vancouver Museum had envisioned exhibits where visitors could do all this and more, investigating unfamiliar corners of the city and gaining insight into how they came to be. The museum wanted to make its collections accessible to the public and exhibit them in a way that would be relevant to today's visitors who, they had found, are often interested in issues of diversity and challenging social norms. issues the museum's aging exhibits did not address.
AldrichPears Associates, in close collaboration with Vancouver Museum curator Joan Seidl, enlivened the museum's exhibit space with four new galleries showcasing the political and cultural issues, icons and shared experiences that touched Vancouverites over the years. The APA design team wanted to reach visitors with deep roots as well as those with little knowledge of the city, and chose to focus on stories unique to Vancouver, including personal accounts and profiles of the city's well-loved and controversial neighborhoods.
The end result created in partnership with Panther Management, Beauchesne & Co., Artcraft Display Graphics Inc, Lightvisions, Acorn Wood Designs Ltd, and Colorific is an experience that resonates with locals and visitors alike.
The Four Galleries
1900s-'20s: The Golden Years
In the Gateway to the Pacific Gallery, the design team expressed the exuberance of a budding 1900s metropolis by merging and overlapping story panels and murals that, together with floor-to-ceiling layers of artifact, evoke Vancouver's hustle and bustle and desire for material goods.
But the early 20th century wasn't all joy and prosperity; racial tensions ran deep as immigrants poured into the city and segregated themselves to overcome an "outsider" feeling. One of the era's most telling stories is that of the Chinese Canadians disenfranchised despite the fact that their dedicated labor in sawmills, kitchens, market gardens and shops helped fuel Vancouver's economic boom.
APA designers juxtaposed this conflict with the city's idealism and prosperity by using pockets of intense light and period-sensitive colours that grow more somber as the visitor approaches the section of the gallery dedicated to the 1918-19 influenza pandemic and World War I.
The Gateway to the Pacific Gallery is an artifact-rich display. Its highlights include a Chinatown exhibit, with a reconstruction of the interior of the Wing Sang building formerly owned by Yip Sang, Chinatown's unofficial mayor. Head tax forms and letters home to family in China give the visitor an appreciation of Vancouver's significant Asian population and the trials it faced.
In all the Vancouver Museum galleries, designers overcame the challenge of recreating rich history in a small space by using full floor-to-ceiling displays.
1920s-'40s: Metropolitan Dreams Meet Hard Times
The 1920s, 30s and 40s were decades of extremes, as Vancouver's frenetic energy faded in the face of the Great Depression and an increasingly unstable economy. In the Boom, Bust and War gallery, the AldrichPears team captured the uncertainty of the times feelings of disillusionment, frustration, and tentative national unity by juxtaposing peaceful domestic scenes with bleaker settings like the shantytowns occupied by the city's homeless. At every turn, the gallery addresses a different development that challenged the city, and colors shift with that focus.
The Boom, Bust and War Gallery's array of artifacts includes a hairdresser's chair; visitors take a seat under the drying hood and listen to stories and local gossip. Another highlight is a recreation of Powell Street, home to a thriving Japanese community in 1940. In its heyday, the community enjoyed much economic success until World War II forced the Japanese into internment camps and branded them as enemies. Photos, murals, and anti-Asian propaganda document this tragedy.
The design team maintained continuity between these two galleries by using a consistent curatorial voice that grounds the visitor throughout.
1950s: Reflection and Reconnection
As fear of the war subsided, Vancouverites shifted their focus to family, community and what it meant to be Canadian. Before long, families reunited after World War II had started the Baby Boom, and the city pulsed with more life and colour than it had in decades.
In The '50s Gallery, the APA design team captured this sense of relaxation and renewed energy with flashy colors and music to match. Neon lights herald Granville Street nightclubs, and a mint-condition Ford Fairlane gleams from its parking spot at the White Spot Drive-in. Foncie Pulice's camera draws smiles of recognition from locals who recall the famous street photographer's work. In fact, Foncie's photos provided inspiration for this entire gallery; designers wanted to evoke the movement and energy that Foncie captured on film.
1960s-'70s: Letting It All Hang Out
Protest songs and poetry, macrame and marijuana. Throughout the 1960s and '70s, a free-loving hippie culture found its home in pockets of the city such as Kitsilano, where residents preached the good news of vegetarianism and sexual freedom.
But spiritual enlightenment and communal living is only a part of the story. The '60s and '70s also brought about a city-wide political and social awareness that laid the foundation for the Vancouver we know today. The plan for a new freeway in the Strathcona neighborhood, for instance, spurred residents to protest, resulting in a new level of community involvement in urban planning that still exists today.
The 'bout a Revolution Gallery showcases artifacts from concert posters to patched jeans, in bright colors and patterns. Designers chose a bold and psychedelic palette inspired by the era's pop culture. Features include a recreation of the courthouse steps, where citizens gathered for anti-Vietnam, anti-nuke and gay rights protests, and a display of the landscape as city planners envisioned it severed by freeways.
With a small artifact collection to choose from, designers drew attention instead to graphic displays and photos, and incorporated quotations from residents that capture the spirit of life at the time
Conclusion
According to curator Joan Seidl, the exhibit's most important artifact ultimately cannot be found inside the museum, but outside its doors. These four galleries are not meant to recreate the city, but to allow for visitors to interact with it on a different level, then take their knowledge out onto the streets and look upon Vancouver with a new perspective.
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