Museum of Anthropology at UBC: Vancouver Travel Guide (4.7★)

Concrete, Cedar and Sea Light

Start in the Great Hall. Arthur Erickson took the post-and-beam form of Northwest Coast plank houses and built it in raw concrete. Behind the carved poles, a wall of glass several storeys high looks out over the grass toward the water. The poles stand at full height, so you look up at them the way they were meant to be seen.

Off the main ramp, the rotunda holds Bill Reid’s The Raven and the First Men. It is a yellow-cedar carving of the Haida creation story, with Raven perched on a clamshell as the first humans push their way out. Light falls on it from above, and you can walk all the way around it.

The Galleries Behind the Hall

The Multiversity Galleries come next. They are visible storage: thousands of belongings from around the world, packed into glass cases and pull-out drawers that you are allowed to open. Coming here straight from the Great Hall feels like moving from a cathedral into an archive.

• Great Hall: monumental poles, house posts and canoes from First Nations along the coast.
• Bill Reid Rotunda: The Raven and the First Men.
• Multiversity Galleries: dense, drawer-by-drawer collections from many cultures.
• Outdoor grounds: Haida-style houses and poles on the bluff behind the building.

The museum stands on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. Labels often name the community and the carver.

Reaching Point Grey

The museum is at 6393 NW Marine Drive, at the northwest edge of campus. To get there by transit, take a bus to the UBC Exchange:

• the 99 B-Line along Broadway
• the R4 along 41st Avenue
• the 4, 14 or 44 from downtown

From the Exchange it is about a 15-minute walk north across campus. Drivers can use the Rose Garden Parkade close by.

Nitobe Memorial Garden is a short walk along NW Marine Drive. The UBC Botanical Garden, the Beaty Biodiversity Museum and the Pacific Spirit Regional Park trails are all nearby. The steep stairs down to Wreck Beach start close to the museum too, so you can pair the visit with sunset on the shore.

Timing the Hall Before the Groups

This place is very popular, so getting the room to yourself comes down to timing.

• Any day it opens: 10am–11am is the quietest hour.
• Thursdays: it currently stays open until 9pm, and 5pm–6pm is another calm window.
• Weekends: avoid 1pm–4pm, when the galleries are at their fullest.

At the moment it is closed on Mondays. It opens 10am–5pm on other days, with the late Thursday close. Museum hours change through the year and on holidays, so check the official site for this month’s schedule. Ticket prices are posted there too.

Many objects here are cultural belongings of living communities, not relics. Some displays restrict photography, so read the signs at each case. Don’t use flash. In the Multiversity drawers, open them gently and close each one before you open the next.

Do the Great Hall first, while it is quiet, and leave the drawers until later. The cases still work when the building fills up; the hall’s sightlines don’t.