PRIDE OF PLACE
New RAM will make you proud to be Albertan
Rumours and innuendo stating otherwise be damned, the new Royal Alberta Museum downtown is a breathtaking anthropological masterpiece worthy of its name.
The sheer volume of artifacts is staggering, painting a nuanced and often surprising peek under the hood of what gives this province its identity. From an undead cavalry of prehistoric megafauna, through Indigenous hunters and warriors covering the land with art, myth and bones, right up to the worn hockey equipment of our modern heroes — everything laid bare, including our horrors and triumphs and the political tension points between them.
Besides tens of thousands of numbered explanations of the collection’s pieces, the interactivity of the facility will strip decades off anyone willing to spend time and simply play. For example, you can: direct the shape of crystals or the might of simulated volcanoes, run your fingers along the sharp edge of a T. rex fang, even work an old switchboard to hear the panic of a frantic mother seeking medical help for her fading child.
And, yes, there’s a full-sized farm truck in the belly of the Human History section — does any Albertan need an explanation why? From carved ships in bottles and light bulbs made by German POWs, to the appropriately onscreen story of CFRN’s gonzo origins, to a cross-section pond of living, swimming turtles, there’s so much to learn.
On a less complicated level, the charming single-parent family of bronze mastodon greeters — long the museum’s mascot — will doubtless turn golden with human rubs.
More than any other development in Edmonton’s core, the RAM is the most impressive chess move in this whole revitalizing-downtown scheme we’ve been playing since well before the CN Tower was just a hole in the ground. And admittedly, I had my doubts.
Architect Donna Clare had years ago promised ex-pat Ernestine Tahedl’s spectacular abstract mosaic murals, which adorned the south side of the downtown post office, would be well-positioned in the new museum on the same lot. Well, that’s an understatement. The public art’s redeployment in nine separate frames facing city hall couldn’t have been better executed. But the museum’s former, sculpture-covered building along the edge of the valley was one of our few still-standing architectural treasures. Its marble curves, attractive theatre and open staircases beautifully haunted the childhood dreams of almost anyone who grew up on either side of our river.
To paraphrase David Foster Wallace, every love story is a ghost story — and sometimes it’s hard to let go.
But after spending ( just) an entire day walking through the rebooted museum at 9810 103a Ave., I’m a convert.
Especially to the sprawling, main floor Indigenous component, which sits under giant photos taken around the province, sharing the same horizon line. There you are, Alberta, in the raw. Underneath each photo is an audio-visual display of a different story or legend — including a hilarious myth of why we shouldn’t take back presents, ending with a flock of birds farting an angry boulder to pieces.
Nearby it runs a beautifully animated tabletop demonstration of medicine people tricking prairie ungulates to their final harvest — a fascinating group hypnosis which kept people fed and clothed on the land.
One of the great and subtle moments of the museum is here, too, as a display declares the actual use of long-ago carved objects remains “unsolved” — showing how science actually works, with best guesses needing proof to become truth.
Further along, with no beginning or end, a circular gallery of First Nations cultural objects is topped by a band of looped video showing modern Indigenous life through the seasons. This place is fittingly called Why We Are Strong, the chanting and drumming filling the hall.
Up the spiral stairs into the Natural History hall, skeletons of potentially surprising animals are legion. Did you know Alberta had lions larger than those now living in Africa? That camels once roamed our grasslands? That pizza-sized, tentacled mollusks floated for millions of years in our skies — then underwater, mind you — in an ancient ocean?
Transplanted and expanded from the old site, the geology wall of rocks could trigger a covetous Gollum in anyone — crystals and gems and multi-coloured stones from around the world filling cabinets organized by type, colour and extraction point. And that classic reverse-pincushion boulder is there, too, pocked with hundreds of holes I’ve been poking at since elementary school. It’s nice to see old friends.
This of course includes the gorgeous animal dioramas — some dating back to the museum’s early days where they lived in a wonderfully dark make-out maze — while newer additions include a pair of bloodied and battling elk out in the open, and a game of sorts where you feed foam balls to an oversized pelican chick and watch its progress on a screen above. This is a surprisingly addictive thing to do.
Back downstairs, human costume and clothing is another highlight — especially the GWG room, a sure way to spark wardrobe envy with a full-length cowboy denim winter jacket and, helped by the seas of sewers at our own GWG plant, numerous instances of Edmonton’s eternal and unofficial uniform: plaid.
There’s even a signed Gretzky portrait — the Great One used to work at a plant in Brantford, and GWG was his first celebrity endorsement.
Meanwhile, so much art! Besides Janvier’s big painting in the Residential School display, there’s a great work by Aaron Paquette at the museum’s entry, and recent paintings by Tahedl upstairs — plus the beautiful mid-century modern decorative walls, transplanted from the post office. And the circular Manitou Asinîy room — free to the public — is indeed a good place to sit and ponder, with a sign outside indicating the museum and Indigenous Elders are still trying to come to terms with this stolen item of reverence, doom once foretold if it was ever removed from where it landed after its long journey through space.
You get the gist. If you’re skeptical, by all means pay the $19 for a single day’s admission. I wish I’d just dropped the $37 for an annual membership. There’s so much going on, even before the rotating feature galleries fill in some of the gaps starting in 2019. Over the years, I’d love to see smartly-assembled shows about, say, SCTV, or our obsession with shopping centres, or more about Ukrainian culture, or our oil industry, or our film industry, or even things that have nothing to do with Alberta at all.
I’ve always felt prouder to be Albertan than of any other regional title — our new museum just turned that feeling up to 100. If you’re hesitating to check it out, please don’t. Understand, though, the more time and energy you give it, the more you’ll get back. Either way, it’s a serious triumph.
If you’re skeptical, by all means pay the $19 for a single day’s admission. I wish I’d just dropped the $37 for an annual membership. There’s so much going on.