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Glenbow Museum
The Glenbow Museum is found in
the Canadian province of Alberta and is one of the biggest museums
in western Canada, containing more than 93,000 square feet of
display space spanning over 20 galleries, that beautifully exhibit
over 1 million items. The Glenbow-Alberta Institute began in 1966,
after Eric Harvie gave his magnificent historical collection to the
citizens of this province. The museum is found in downtown Calgary,
right across from the Calgary Tower, and the institute manages the
Glenbow, which is open to the public, contains not only the museum
collections, but a fantastic art collection, archives and library.
It opened a new exhibit in 2007, called Mavericks, on the third
floor that traces the history of the province via 48 influential and
colorful people. There are four permanent collections that include;
mineralogy, cultural history, military history and ethnology. The
cultural history collection contains more than 100,000 items that
come here from the far reaches of the globe, that gives some insight
into the life of folks in western Canada from the late 1800s to the
current day. These items tell how people made their living, what
they would do for relaxation, how they worshipped, how they were
governed, how they ate and dressed and how their family mementos
helped them to create a new home in this difficult land. It includes
important holdings of northern explorations, Alberta pottery,
numismatics, western Canadian folk studies, pressed glass and
textiles. The military collection is considered one of the most
diverse in western Canada, containing 26,000 items that have come
here from numerous countries spanning more than 5 centuries,
especially Asian, North American and European firearms and edged
weapons. It also includes some Canadian medals, orders, decorations,
Japanese arms and armour. The ethnology collection includes about
48,000 items created or used by the indigenous people of North
America, especially the northwest coast, northern plains, subarctic
and arctic areas as well as certain areas of Asia, Africa, Oceania
and South America. The museum's expansive mineralogy
collection contains numerous minerals, precious and semi-precious
stones that came here from around the world, especially western
Canada. The specimens were chosen based on exhibition quality, plus
mineralogical importance and Treasures of the Mineral World is very
popular with rock hounds, geologists and visitors from all walks of
life. Also included are minerals that will glow in the dark, fool's
gold, part of the world's oldest rock and rock crystals in every
color of the rainbow. The art collection has 28,000 works that date
from the 19th century to the current day, mainly historical, modern
and contemporary works that came from or pertain to the northwest
parts of North America. It has a marvelous amount of landscape
paintings, a world renown Canadian prints that include works from
Sybil Andrews, First Nations and Inuit art, western, wildlife and
American illustration. The Asian collection has a semi-permanent
collection on loan from the Bumper Development Corporation Ltd. that
holds masks, paintings and sculptures in stone, wood and metal from
Hindu and Buddhist cultures of Asia and reliefs that span the first
century to the 18th century.
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