The Examples of Canada and Mexico

Both Canada and Mexico have major national museums in or near their capitals that tell the stories of the peoples that came to their lands.

Canadian Museum of Civilization, Ottawa suburb

The Canadian Museum of Civilization is located in Gatineau, Quebec, on the banks of the Ottawa River directly opposite Parliament Hill and is easily accessible by foot from downtown Ottawa. It has 270,000 square feet of display space spread over four levels. The museum’s current building was opened in 1989. It is the most visited museum in Canada with 1.4 million visitors a year.

The galleries on the first level present exhibitions relating principally to Canada’s first peoples and starts with their arrival some 20,000 years ago. It includes their histories, first contacts with Europeans, cultural identities, artistic expressions, and their traditional and contemporary ways of life.

On the next level up, in Canada Hall, the nation’s 1,000 year history is narrated beginning with the arrival of Norse explorers. The display starts with the Atlantic Coast, 1000-1750 AD; Central Region, 1750-1870; Canadian Prairies, 1870-1920; Pacific Coast, 1920-1970; and Canadian North, 1970-2000. Reconstructed buildings and other historical settings are among the exhibits evoking a sense of different periods and different regions of the country. There are also spaces for changing exhibitions, an IMAX theater and various outdoor exhibits that are accessible as weather permits.

There was criticism about its perceived Disney-fication, but it is now a major tourist attraction and one writer says that it is now embraced by different political factions as a national symbol of a pluralistic, multi-cultural society.

National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City

Mexico’s National Museum of Anthropology and History, the nation’s centerpiece and one of its best-known museums, is located in Chapultepec Park in the midst of Mexico City. The museum covers an area of 858,000 square feet, almost half of which is outdoors, and has 23 rooms for exhibits. The museum was established in 1825, and its current museum building opened in 1964.

Each of the rooms is dedicated to a different culture, beginning with the origins of humans, encompasses the pre-Hispanic periods, and covers a large variety of contemporary rural cultures displaying their crafts and everyday life.

The museum is most noted for its anthropology and archeology exhibits of the pre-Hispanic period. These displays on the museum’s first floor cover, among others, the Maya and Aztec peoples and cultures. These first floor rooms also include dioramas of Mexico City when the Spaniards first arrived and reproductions of part of a pyramid at Teotihuacan and the famous Aztec calendar stone wheel.

On the second floor, ethnographic exhibits show the way people throughout Mexico live today and include various huts, recorded songs, crafts, clothing and lifelike models of village activities. Many of the customs depicted date to the pre-Hispanic period.

The exhibition halls surround a large open patio space that features a small pond and a large square concrete umbrella supported by a single pillar around which there is a waterfall.

The museum also hosts a variety of changing special exhibitions.