Past Exhibitions

DOWNSTREAM WHERE THE WATERS MIX *Please note that this exhibition has moved on to it's next location.

New Westminster Museum’s newest exhibition, titled “Downstream Where the Waters Mix” a season of “Honouring Our Grandmother’s Healing Journey”, is a multi-year movement. Curated by lead visionary artist, Nadine Spence, the project connects artists and Indigenous communities across B.C. through culture, arts and ceremony to restore relationships between generations with the water, lands and wild salmon. Featuring bentwood chests and boxes, woven blankets, carving, art, and regalia, this exhibition focuses on personal, family, and community healing journeys in a safe and respectful space that does not oppress the truth and realities of Indigenous Peoples of the past or in the present day.

Click here to watch Nadine Spence and NWMA Curator, Michelle, walk through the galleries and speak about the exhibition.

HOUSING VALUES

Feature Gallery & Gallery 7 (Anvil Centre)
Closing April 2024

Opening reception February 20, 2024 @ 6 - 8 pm
Anvil Centre, Museum Galleries (3rd floor)
777 Columbia Street

*This event is open to the public, free, and does not require registration.

Housing is the hottest topic around these days. Everywhere you turn, people are talking about housing but it’s not a new concern. How much, where and what people live in has been debated since New Westminster was founded in 1861. Housing Values is a new exhibit presented by the New Westminster Museum & Archives, examining ideas around housing in New Westminster and how cultural values, economics and history influence where and how we live in this city. The exhibit opens in October in honour of the United Nations’ World Habitat Day.

Programs associated with this exhibition:

Storytelling Walk: Homelessness and New Westminster (All Ages)

Walk with Museum staff and the New Westminster Homelessness Coalition Society today learn about homelessness in our community from a historical perspective. Engage with important sites and stories, including the voices of those with lived experience. The current work of the NWHCS and supportive housing will also be discussed. Presented as part of the official kick off to Homelessness Action Week in New Westminster.

Saturday, October 7
10:00am - 12:00pm
Registration Fee: Free Course ID: 191645

RECONCILING

Gallery 7 (Anvil Centre)

February 16 2022 – September 2023

Through three installations, Reconciling addresses truths attached to acts of reconciliation. Haida/Nisga’a artist Luke Parnell explores a feeling of disenchantment through his piece Neon Reconciliation Explosion; the downed statue of Judge Begbie addresses the imposition of foreign laws on a land; and the 215 shoes placed at New Westminster’s cenotaph reflects our community’s response to the Residential School legacy in Canada.

Programs with this exhibition

Neon Reconciliation Explosion Field Trip

We have worked with Luke to create an interactive activity for students. Students will receive an inquiry-based tour of the exhibition and can then reflect, create, and connect with what reconciliation means to them.

Click here to see the full flyer

Celebrating Black History in Canada through Tessellation and Portraiture

Moved by a push for greater social justice, New Westminster Secondary School Art students researched prominent figures from Black History in Canada and share their contributions in black and white tessellation patterns and portraits. Equal parts black and white, these works challenge a Eurocentric-lens that is too often applied when discussing history by featuring People of Colour and Black Canadians in an equally starring role. Each student provides a thoughtful artist statement with their portrait.

This exhibition replicates the original class work, design, and display.

View the portraits and artist statements here

The 215

Johnny Bandura is a Coast Salish artist who has created a series of 215 portraits that were inspired by his own family. His paternal Grandmother, Marie, was born in New Westminster and as a very young girl, she was taken from her home and family and sent to the Kamloops Indian Residential School in the 1930s. In May 2021, when the news reported that the skeletal remains of 215 children were discovered on the grounds of the Kamloops Residential School, Johnny recognized that many of these lost 215 children could well have been his grandmother’s classmates and friends and he felt a very strong need to do something to honour these children.

So, Johnny began painting. He painted to work through the pain, grief, and sadness. The first

painting he completed was of a medicine woman, the second was of a hunter. These two portraits flowed easily from him, and he saw that they reflected the traditional way of life, before residential schools existed. But he couldn’t stop with these two portraits. He wanted to paint a portrait for each of the 215 children to reflect the life that they never that the chance to live. He painted the children as adults because he strongly felt they were speaking to him; he felt they wanted to be viewed as more than just children in uniforms. He wanted to let them grow up in his portraits and let them be something that they never got to be. He gave them lives that were both traditional as well as modern. He painted a Pow Wow Grass Dancer in traditional regalia and a Judge in courtroom robes. He painted doctors, nurses, Fancy Dancers, punk rockers, and hockey players.

He imagined lives for them that reflected all areas of society. He created an exhibit to show what they could have become.

AIR HUGS

NEW WEST TOGETHER DURING COVID-19

A new exhibit on the community’s resilience during the pandemic.

Gallery 7 at New Westminster Museum
3rd floor Anvil Centre

Tuesday March 31, 2021 – Sunday September 5, 2021

DO YOU HAVE MORE INFO?

Do you know the story behind a photo in the exhibition? Do you want to share your experiences of the pandemic?

Stories from the past and present in New Westminster to help us understand how people eat in our community.

View the exhibit here.

The exhibition ran from Thursday May 16, 2019 to December 1, 2019.

See below for exhibit links, associated programs and more.

VIDEOS

Community Kitchen

EXHIBIT LINKS

This exhibition has QR codes with information if you want to find out more. The links are also listed below, under each section:

Introduction

Some common food terms you’ll see in this exhibition.

What is Food Security?

“Poor people are lazy and don’t want to work.” Do you believe these myths? Check out these New West poverty myth busters and what you can do to help pull people out of poverty.

Like and follow New Westminster Community Food Action.

The Official Community Plan provides the vision and goals for the city to 2041, including policies related to food.

The Community Poverty Reduction Strategy identifies specific actions to enhance the quality of life of those people living in poverty and to provide opportunities to assist them to move out of poverty.

Two of the 14 goals in the Environmental Strategy and Action Plan relate to the environmental impacts of food.

New Westminster Food Security Action Plan

Food Sovereignty

Starting in 2007 and lasting about five years, the Fraserside Community Services Society’s Biggest Little Garden in Town project helped apartment residents start gardens on their balconies with tiered cedar boxes that were accessible for all people. With seed and garden workshops, this social enterprise helped people access fresh produce that they themselves grew, even if they didn’t have a backyard or a plot. Watch this video about the project.

Community Gardens
Find out about getting a plot at one of the community gardens.

Keeping certain farm animals to supplement diets is legal in New West.

For the laws on raising chickens in New Westminster, see 1967’s Public Health Bylaw No. 4271.

If you meet the requirements, you can also keep a beehive in New West. See the bylaw.

Food Systems: Farming and Fishing

The Choi Guide
Vancouver’s Hua Foundation put together a seasonal guide for the Chinese vegetables grown in the Lower Mainland. You can read it in English with pronunciations in Cantonese and Mandarin. Here’s the Cantonese version to help you on your next shopping trip.

Food Systems: Distribution and Access

The Food Costing in BC report provides data about the affordability of food. It tells us how much income families and individuals need in order to eat healthy meals. The report is done every two years by the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC), with the last one completed in 2017. The report informs calculations for living wage numbers.

Fuel Up
A 2017 UNICEF report ranked Canada 37th out of 41 countries for children’s access to healthy food.

In February 2019, after two years of planning, the New Westminster School District launched a cost-shared universally accessible school lunch program, the first of its kind in Canada. Starting in three schools (Qayqayt Elementary, Queen Elizabeth Elementary and Queensborough Middle Schools), it will eventually be available to all schools in the district.

Read more and order a meal for your kids.

Things Were So Cheap Back Then!
Or were they? Compare the prices in the ads below to what they would be in today’s money. Use an inflation calculator

Food Systems: Consumption

$40 a Week @ the Market
In 2016, blogger Katie Bartel wrote about her summer market challenge: to stretch out $40 every week at the New West Farmers Market. Read about it.

Food Literacy

Canada Food Guide

The new Canada Food Guide, released this year, recommends a shift to a more plant-based diet, with water as the drink of choice. The aim is to have a plate that is half vegetables, one-quarter protein (such as nuts, meat and tofu), and one-quarter whole grains (like bread, rice and quinoa). It also recommends reducing sugary drinks (including juice), sweets and pastries, salt and saturated fat, and alcohol.

New West Cookbookery

There is a cookbook lending library at the River Market. Share the cookbooks you love for a while or forever, or take out what you need for a month.

To borrow a book, register here.

Our City’s Food Culture

Helping You Celebrate
Did you know that the Family Services of Greater Vancouver has grants for community celebrations through the Vancouver Foundation’s Neighbourhood Small Grant program?

Neighbours around New West have found unique ways to get to know each other through food. At the Glenbrooke Salad and Pie days, residents brought their home-cooked meals to share with one another. A Roma Hall chef got a grant to teach Italian cooking at Thompson’s Landing Park in Queensborough. The Fraser Fraser River Food Buying Club received seed funding to establish. Many have received grants to start new community gardens or have multicultural meals.

Apply for a grant here.

Diverse Eating in New West
New West has many good international restaurants.

Explore Downtown’s shops and restaurants with this map.

Or check out the diversity along Twelfth Street.

Opening Reception
Thursday, October 25, 2018, 6 pm - 8 pm
Exhibit dates: October 26, 2018 - April 28, 2019

From the first cumbersome printing press dragged over the stumps and hills of the budding city, this exhibit shows New Westminster’s past of fake news, clickbait and alternative facts.

MEDIA LITERACY LINKS

Click on the links below to learn more about disinformation, misinformation and how to be a better social media citizen.

We’ll also be updating the museum’s Facebook page regularly to share other articles that helped us in developing the exhibit: follow us for more information on media literacy.

Guides

Verifying the News