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Vancouver museum wins national award for exhibit

The story of the Chinese diaspora in B.C. is a significant one in the province's history.
Brendan Kergin
Brendan Kergin
vancouver-museum-a-seat-at-the-table
The exhibit 'A Seat at the Table' earned the Museum of Vancouver a national award.Museum of Vancouver/Facebook

The story of the Chinese diaspora in B.C. is a significant one in the province's history.

A Seat at the Table is the Museum of Vancouver's effort to rethink how it's portrayed and depicted. Now that exhibit has now been recognized with a national award for outstanding achievement in exhibitions by the Canadian Museums Association (CMA).

"A Seat at the Table is timely project that connected students, museum personnel, cultural organizations, and governments to design and populate two unique but complementary multimedia exhibitions in Vancouver, one in Chinatown, and one in the Museum of Vancouver," says the CMA about the exhibit.

There's also a digital component to the exhibit on the museum's website. It will be at the museum until January 2023.

"A Seat at the Table was first and foremost a collaborative and creative project spanning more than three years and engaging diverse groups of knowledge holders, artists, historians and students in rethinking the Chinese diaspora in British Columbia as a way of rethinking British Columbia," says the exhibit's co-curators on Facebook. "We are thrilled and honoured to have CMA recognizing the value of this project."

The Museum of Vancouver wasn't the only local institution recognized in the awards. The Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at UBC received an honourable mention in the research category for its exhibit A Future for Memory: Art and Life after the Great East Japan Earthquake. And MOA volunteer Clifford Pereira received the museum volunteer award for his work on the accuracy of labels for more than 2,700 African items.

And the Britannia Mine Museum's Kirstin Clausen was recognized for 30 years of work within B.C.'s cultural industry, including time with the BC Museums Association, Barkerville Heritage Trust and Heritage B.C.

The art show Uninvited was also recognized twice over, as a winner in the research category and honourable mention in the exhibit category. Created by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection outside of Toronto, it's currently on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery.