Manitoba Museum revamp gets corporate cash infusion

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This article was published 01/02/2017 (3143 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba Museum’s multimillion-dollar redevelopment campaign got a $250,000 boost from the Bank of Montreal Wednesday.

The BMO Financial Group donation was the focus of a joint press conference with museum and bank officials at the downtown Rupert Avenue museum.

“We’ve had a great relationship doing business with BMO over the last 50 years and we’re thrilled that they are supporting our vision to share the stories of Manitoba with Manitobans and tourists in new and exciting ways,” museum CEO Claudette Leclerc said.

The announcement comes a week before the opening of a year-long exhibit to celebrate the country’s 150th anniversary called Legacies of Confederation on Feb. 9.

The BMO donation supports the museum’s $19 million Bringing Our Stories Forward campaign that will see upgrades to 42 per cent of the museum’s public galleries.

Those galleries include the urban gallery which depicts Winnipeg in its gateway-to-the-west boom days nearly a century ago, as well as the Nonsuch, Grasslands and Orientation Galleries.

“Our understanding of Manitoba’s place in the world is deeper and richer today. We know more and we have new perspectives on our past. And this knowledge needs to be reflected in the stories we tell,” campaign chair Jeoff Chipman said.

“History is not stagnant; it moves forward and the time is right to renew our museum.”

That renewal will incorporate indigenous contributions to the province’s history, adding layers of meaning to the existing galleries, folding in reconciliation themes and introducing multimedia technology to the hands-on environment the museum already showcases.

The BMO announcement is the third of three donations to the campaign in recent months.

The Hudson’s Bay Company History Foundation gave the museum $500,000 in November and in October the Chipmans and their family-owned Megill-Stephenson Company Ltd. donated $250,000.

The Chipman family also owns True North Sports and Entertainment, the Winnipeg Jets, the Birchwood Automotive Group among other corporate entities.

Bringing Our Stories Forward will see some 23,000 square feet of the museum upgraded by 2020, to coincide with the province’s 150th anniversary, HBC’s 350th anniversary and the museum’s 50th anniversary.

It is the second step in a much bigger capital redevelopment campaign of $160 million for the museum.

The first step of that decade-long effort is the $5.3 million expansion of Alloway Hall which is to open on time and on schedule in May, with a giant dinosaur exhibit that runs through Labour Day.

The final steps of the mega-development are for a new science centre and community commons. The two additions will fill out the museum’s block-wide footprint on Main Street next to the Concert Hall.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca