Manitoba Museum
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| Established | 1965 |
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| Location | 190 Rupert Avenue Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3B 0N2 |
| Type | provincial human and natural history museum |
| Architect | Herbert Henry Gatenby Moody Moody and Moore |
| Website | www.manitobamuseum.ca/ |
The Manitoba Museum, previously the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature is the largest museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It is located close to City Hall. The museum was designed by Herbert Henry Gatenby Moody of Moody and Moore in 1965.
The museum is the largest heritage centre in Manitoba and the world and focuses on human and natural heritage. It has planetarium shows and a Science Gallery hall. The Institute for Stained Glass in Canada has documented the stained glass at the Manitoba Museum.
In 1879, the Historical and Scientific Society of Manitoba began officially to collect and preserve its heritage at some unknown location. In the early 1890s, E. Thompson Seton wrote about the Manitoba Museum, which was reportedly housed in the basement of Winnipeg's City Hall. Those collections appear to have been dispersed, and by 1900 there was no public museum in Winnipeg. There were, however, significant private collectors and from 1911 to the early 1920s material from their collections was exhibited in the Exposition Building of the former Winnipeg Industrial Bureau at Main and Water. The present Museum holds some of these collections although most were dispersed.
In 1932, the Natural History Society of Manitoba, the Winnipeg Board of Trade, and the Auditorium Commission founded the Manitoba Museum Association. The Manitoba Museum officially opened its doors on December 15, 1932 in the newly built Civic Auditorium (now the Provincial Archives Building) on Vaughan Street. The Museum remained in that location, together with the Winnipeg Art Gallery, until 1967. Critical support for outreach programs and exhibits came from the Carnegie Corporation and Junior League. Professors at the University of Manitoba, formerly the Manitoba Agriculture College, played significant roles in the Museum's development. The Museum was run by volunteer Honorary Curators, with assistance from other dedicated volunteers and small staff.
As the Museum grew in acquisitions and attendance, the need for an expanded facility became critical, and in 1954 the Board began planning a new institution, which would reflect the values of the time. They consulted extensively with the American Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium. Funding came in large part from federal project sources designed to create new Canadian cultural facilities for the 1967 Canadian Centennial commemoration.
In 1964, a proposal for a museum and planetarium was submitted to the Manitoba government headed by Premier Duff Roblin. The proposal stated that: "Manitoba needs a Modern Museum of Man and Nature. Not a collection of stuffed birds, antiquated firearms or dusty rocks – but a living history of man and his environment, tracing the evolution of Manitoba's resources, industry and culture, past and present, and pointing the way, through research, to the future. To inform, instruct and educate by interpreting nature to man and their effect on each other in the function of a Modern Museum of Man and Nature."
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