Building Canada's National Museum of Man: an interprofessional dialogue

Abstract

Early in 1982 the Government of Canada announced the creation of a special crown corporation, the Canada Museums Construction Corporation (CMCC), to design and erect new buildings for two museums within the National Museums of Canada: the National Gallery of Canada and the National Museum of Man. After extensive consultation, in particular with the staffs of the two museums and the Board of Trustees of the National Museums, CMCC made recommendations on sites and architects, which the government approved early in 1983. The architect chosen for the National Museum of Man, to work in collaboration with the Montreal firm of Tétreault, Parent, Languedoc, was Douglas Cardinal of Edmonton, Alberta. Most of Cardinal's highly individual and sculptural buildings, with serpentine walls, are in his native province—in smaller communities such as Grande Prairie, Red Deer and Ponoka. It is probably not unimportant, since the Museum of Man is devoted to the history and life of mankind in Canada, that Cardinal is a metis; his maternal grandmother was a Black Foot. The Director of the National Museum of Man since July 1983 has been Dr George MacDonald, who has worked at that museum for twenty‐one years and who was for eight years Chief of its Archaeology Division. Responding to a request from Museum, Dr Jean Sutherland Boggs, former Chairman of the CMCC, organized a discussion which took place in November 1984.