Remarkable year for Museum of Civilization and War Museum travelling exhibitions

Posted on: 11/08/2010

Remarkable year for Museum of Civilization and
War Museum travelling exhibitions

Gatineau, Quebec, August 10, 2010 — The Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Canadian War Museum are bringing an impressive number of exhibitions to audiences across Canada and around the world this year. The travelling exhibition calendar is packed for 2010–2011, with at least one opening every month in 2010. In all, the two Museums are scheduled to present 16 separate exhibitions at 26 venues spread across six provinces and three foreign countries.

“Not everyone can visit us in Ottawa-Gatineau,” said Dr. Victor Rabinovitch, President and CEO of the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation. “So it’s wonderful to have so many opportunities to collaborate with other museums, large and small, bringing our national collections to their communities. Sharing Canada’s history and heritage with all Canadians and with the rest of the world is a privilege as well as a responsibility,” Dr. Rabinovitch noted.

In Canada, the Museum of Civilization is presenting the exhibition Wind Work, Wind Play: Weathervanes and Whirligigs in Alma, Que., until September 12, 2010 and will be presenting Heart and Soul, an exhibition of Quebec folk art, in Edmonton from February to May 2011. In addition, a Canadian-based content exhibition, Acres of Dreams, is currently on display in Nanaimo, B.C. The Museum’s spectacular First Peoples of Canada is scheduled to open at the Museo Nacional de las Culturas in Mexico City in October. This globetrotting exhibition, which sheds light on the long and varied histories of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples, premiered in China during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, and has also travelled to Germany and Japan.

The spy-themed Top Secret, developed by the Canadian Children’s Museum in 2007, thrilled young visitors at the Boston Children’s Museum this past spring. It will go to the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery in Alberta from October 18 to January 9. Another well-travelled Children’s Museum exhibition, Pack Your Bags!, began the year at the St. Catharines Museum in Ontario. It is on display at Exporail in Saint-Constant, Que., until November 14, and then moves to La pulperie de Chicoutimi on December 4.

Among the major Canadian War Museum exhibitions on tour, The Navy: A Century in Art was presented at The Military Museums in Calgary in the spring and will travel to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax from August 5 to October 24. This celebration of the Canadian Navy’s centennial opens at the War Museum in Ottawa on Remembrance Day, November 11.

A Brush with War: Military Art from Korea to Afghanistan is also on a cross-country tour, showcasing Canadian military art from 1946 to 2008, with individual pieces bearing witness to the personal experiences of artists with the Canadian Forces at home and abroad. It will be shown at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, N.B., from September 18 to November 15 before coming to the War Museum on December 10.

“We are proud of the quality, variety and depth of the exhibitions we develop at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the