Glenbow Museum
Calgary, in western Canada, seems to have one of
the biggest museums in the province with more than 93,000 square
feet of space sitting in over 20 galleries with a collection of
more than a million objects, and named the Glenbow Museum. In
1966, when the Glenbow-Alberta Institute was created, after Eric
Harvie had donated his huge historical collection to the
citizens of Alberta. The museum sits in downtown Calgary across
from the well known Calgary Tower, and maintains the Glenbow
that is open to the public and contains not only museum
collections, a great art collection, archives and library. A new
permanent display opened that is called, "Mavericks", on the
third floor tracing the history of Alberta through 48
influential people, in 2007. It houses four main collections;
mineralogy, cultural history, military history and ethnology.
The Cultural history collection has more than 100,000 objects
that originated in various corners of the world, giving some
insight into the lifestyles of Western Canada that dates from
the late 19th century to the current day. Its holdings include;
textiles, Alberta pottery, pressed glass, Western Canadian folk
studies, numismatics and northern explorations. The Asian
collection is on semi-permanent loan from the Bumper Development
Corp, Ltd., and includes; paintings, masks, reliefs and masks as
well as sculptures in wood, stone and metal from the Hindu and
Buddhist cultures of Asia that date from the 1st century to the
18th. Their ethnology collections contains about 48,000 objects
that had been created or used by the indigenous peoples of North
America, especially from the Northern Plains, and arctic,
Northwest coast and subarctic areas and certain areas of Asia,
South America, Africa and Oceania. Mineralogy collections
include; minerals, precious and semi-precious stones from across
the globe, especially Western Canada; with its specimens chosen
for their exhibition value and mineralogical importance. The
Treasures of the World expo is quite popular with visitors, rock
hounds and geologists, of all ages that want to enjoy the depth
and diversity of the earth's minerals. This exceptional display
also houses a display of Fool's gold, rock crystals of every
color of the rainbow, a part of the earth's oldest rock and
minerals that glow in the dark. There is so much more to enjoy
and see, with the military history gallery, the art collection
and the library.
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