Not everyone would agree with Royal sa国际传媒 Museum CEO Jack Lohman鈥檚 assessment of the museum鈥檚 lobby as a dysfunctional space that looks like the entrance to a shopping mall, but his energetic vision is on track to making a good thing better.
Lohman is leading the effort to develop a master plan for the museum to make the facility more engaging, less cluttered and easier to navigate. No mere tinkering and touching up here 鈥� he has asked the lead architect to 鈥渃reate something that takes your breath away.鈥�
The redevelopment of the museum will not be a facelift, but a transformation, if Lohman has his way. And we hope he does.
The museum makes a dramatic first impression; to enter its lobby is to be struck by the soaring First Nations figures and the open space. But it should be better, says Lohman, who calls the lobby a 鈥渧isually polluted space.鈥� His opinion is just fine 鈥� being satisfied with good enough is not the way of excellence.
The RBCM is an excellent facility, one of the crown jewels of the capital district. The aim of the master plan is to make it world-class.
Lohman鈥檚 vision is not just about looks. He wants space used more effectively and access improved to collections and archives.
Plans include a new space for the sa国际传媒 Archives, a proposal that doesn鈥檛 come a minute too soon. The archives are below sea level, mere metres from the waterfront, scarcely the ideal location for irreplaceable documents and other material from the province鈥檚 past.
Ambitious plans for development will require ambitious fundraising 鈥� it鈥檚 not a matter of spending money on the past, but of investing in the future.
While a museum is of necessity a repository of things historical, it cannot remain embedded in the past. A good museum is a living entity that preserves the continuity from past to present, rather than languishing as a warehouse for dusty artifacts.
鈥淗istory is not the past, dead and gone for all but a few fact-obsessed zealots,鈥� wrote the University of Victoria鈥檚 Eric Sager in the sa国际传媒 recently. 鈥淗istory is the past that exists in the present: It is the social memory that guides us between past, present and future. Without it, we have amnesia, and we cannot see our way clearly.鈥�
The museum鈥檚 first home after it was founded in 1886 was a single room next to the provincial secretary鈥檚 office in the old legislative buildings known as 鈥渢he Bird Cages.鈥� It moved from there to the former Supreme Court building, and then to the east wing of the newly constructed legislative buildings in 1898.
As it grew in function and use by the public, it took up more space, including six nearby vacant lots transformed into Thunderbird Park in 1941 as a home for the museum鈥檚 totem-pole collection.
Its move from the legislature basement to its current home, built as a Canadian centennial project and opened in 1968, allowed the museum to expand its scope. It has continued to evolve as the permanent galleries opened through the 1970s and 1980s.
The master plan will take the museum a major and necessary leap ahead in that evolution.
