Museum’s $25M not enough, senators told
Museum of Civilization needs double that to do proper job, anthropology society says
The $25 million the federal government has allotted to transform the Canadian Museum of Civilization into a national history museum falls far short of what is required, says the president of the Canadian Anthropology Society.
In a presentation to a Senate committee this week, Lorne Holyoak said current costs to meet curatorial standards are normally about $1,000 a square foot.
Based on its planned 50,000-square-foot renovation, that means the museum requires $50 million to “preserve the world-class standard of the museum,” he told members of the standing committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology.
“This gross underfunding is going to diminish the quality of the museum,” Holyoak warned. “We will lose a truly great ethnological museum and be left with an inadequate history museum, all in one fell stroke.”
The museum’s website presents “flummery” asserting that the museum will be even better after its transformation, Holyoak said. “It won’t be better; it will just be diminished.”
But Dean Oliver, the museum’s director of research, said there is no arbitrary square-foot standard for exhibition design.
He said the $25-million budget, which equates to about $500 a square foot, is “well within the range of any contemporary exhibition design of which I am aware. We have enough money to do an excellent job.”
Holyoak also said the museum’s collections are 80 per cent aboriginal and its curatorial expertise reflects that. “It is not feasible to convert those materials and that expertise into other, still unspecified Canadian historical themes.”
Oliver acknowledged that the museum doesn’t have all the artifacts it would like for the planned new Canadian history hall, especially the part that will focus on Canada since the Second World War.
But he said the museum has a $9-million collections fund and will give priority to the acquisition of items that will help flesh out the new hall’s historical narrative.
In another presentation, Dominique Marshall, president of the Canadian Historical Association, criticized changes to the museum’s mandate proposed in a bill amending the Museum Act.
Among other things, Marshall said the revised mandate does not encourage a critical understanding of the past.
Such critical understanding should be a goal of all museums, she said. “They should present texts and displays that challenge master narratives, and pay justice to the variety of the populations of the past, rather than simply venerating national heroes and powerful actors.”
Marshall also expressed alarm at the deletion of words that until now have assured the curatorial autonomy of the historians and other professionals employed by the museum.
However, the Conservative-dominated committee paid no heed to the concerns raised by Holyoak and Marshall, approving the Museum Act amendments without any changes Thursday.
The bill, which has already passed the House of Commons, will return to the Senate for third reading.