Museum of Anthropology Vancouver Bc

Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia

The Museum of Anthropology holds the largest collection of Bill Reid’s work in the world. Reid was the Haida artist who almost single-handedly revived Northwest Coast Indigenous art in the mid-20th century, working in gold, silver, bronze, and cedar at a scale and quality that shifted the art world’s understanding of what Indigenous Canadian art was. His sculpture Raven and the First Men, a 4.5-tonne block of yellow cedar carved to show Raven coaxing the first humans out of a giant clamshell, is in the museum’s rotunda and is the piece you’ll know if you’ve ever handled a Canadian $20 bill. The image appeared on the note for years and the sculpture is more astonishing in person than any photograph of it suggests.

The MOA is on the UBC campus in Point Grey, about 30 minutes from downtown Vancouver by bus. The effort required to get there is one reason it is undervisited relative to its quality. The building was designed by Arthur Erickson in 1976 and expanded by Stantec in 2010; the tall concrete posts and beams are a deliberate echo of the structural logic of a Pacific Northwest Coast longhouse.

The Great Hall

The Great Hall is the visual centrepiece: a glass-walled room housing totem poles, house posts, and carved feast dishes from First Nations of the Northwest Coast. Some poles date from the 19th century; others are more recent commissions. The natural light through the full-height glass walls changes the character of the carvings throughout the day. The scale is significant and not easily conveyed before you stand in the space.

The Multiversity Galleries

Open visible storage holding over 40,000 objects from cultures worldwide. You can ask staff to access specific items. This model of democratic access to stored collections is genuinely unusual for a museum of this size. The drawers below the display cases are worth pulling open; there is far more accessible in the storage system than what is formally displayed.

Current Exhibitions

For most of 2025, the museum ran Nuxalk Strong, the world’s first dedicated exhibition of the Nuxalk Nation, bringing together over 60 Nuxalk historic belongings. Check the current exhibition programme at the MOA website; the rotating exhibitions are consistently significant in Indigenous art terms.

Practicalities

Adult admission is CAD 26 as of 2026, with reduced prices for seniors and youth. Thursday evenings from 17:00 to 21:00 are at half price. Free for Indigenous peoples and UBC students. Photography is permitted in most areas. Complementary guided tours run at 12:30pm and 2:00pm daily. The museum is closed on Mondays outside summer.

Getting there: Bus 99 B-Line from Commercial-Broadway station to UBC, or Bus 44 from UBC Bus Exchange. The campus is large; get off at the MOA stop.

The UBC Campus and Surroundings

Pacific Spirit Regional Park surrounds the UBC campus with 73 kilometres of trails through second-growth coastal forest. Nitobe Memorial Garden (entry around CAD 7, free on Monday mornings) is a traditional Japanese garden maintained by the Japanese consul and considered one of the most authentic outside Japan.

Wreck Beach at the western edge of the campus requires a descent of about 500 stairs and is a clothing-optional beach. The cliff-top views from the UBC rose garden on a clear day show the North Shore mountains, the Strait of Georgia, and Vancouver Island.

Where to Eat

The museum cafe handles sandwiches and light meals. For better food, the UBC village area is ten minutes’ walk and has several cafes. Salmon n’ Bannock in Vancouver’s Fairview neighbourhood is the best restaurant in the city for Indigenous Canadian cuisine: bannock, salmon prepared in traditional and contemporary ways, and game meats. Worth the trip from UBC.