Museum of Anthropology: The Best Museum in Vancouver by a Comfortable Margin

The Museum of Anthropology (MOA) sits on the University of British Columbia campus at Point Grey, about 40 minutes from downtown Vancouver by bus. The building itself, designed by Arthur Erickson in 1976, is a sequence of post-and-beam concrete halls with 15-metre-high glass walls facing Howe Sound and the North Shore mountains. The architecture references the longhouses of Pacific Northwest First Nations. On a clear day the combination of mountains, water, and sky framing the collection inside is as good as a museum setting gets.

The Collection

The Great Hall holds totem poles, house posts, and carved figures from Indigenous nations across British Columbia. Some are 19th-century pieces, others recent. The collection represents Haida, Nisga’a, Heiltsuk, Kwakwaka’wakw, and other nations whose relationship to the land and sea shaped the carving traditions here. The Raven and the First Men, a 1980 yellow cedar sculpture by Haida artist Bill Reid, is the centrepiece of the Rotunda. Reid’s work is the benchmark for contemporary Northwest Coast art, and this is his masterpiece: the Raven perching over a giant clamshell from which the first humans are emerging.

The Multiversity Galleries display around 10,000 objects in open storage, accessible by the public, covering ceramics, textiles, and objects from cultures worldwide. This is an unusual approach: most museums hide their storage. Here you open drawers, rotate trays, and navigate the collection directly. It’s absorbing in a way that conventional display cases aren’t.

Entry and Timing

Entry costs CAD $23 for adults, CAD $21 for seniors. Free on the first Thursday evening of each month (17:00-21:00). Open Tuesday-Sunday, 10:00-17:00, with Thursday evening extension.

Tuesdays are the quietest days for a weekday visit. The museum is rarely crowded by major institution standards; even on weekends you’ll have space to look at things properly.

Getting There

Bus 14 (UBC) from downtown Vancouver runs directly to the UBC loop, 5 minutes walk from the museum. The trip takes about 40 minutes and costs $3 with a Compass Card. Parking on campus is metered; the museum lot fills on weekends.

The UBC Campus

While at UBC, the Beaty Biodiversity Museum (worth 90 minutes; the 26-metre blue whale skeleton is the largest on display in Canada) and the UBC Botanical Garden are both within 15 minutes’ walk. Nitobe Memorial Garden, a traditional Japanese garden, is directly adjacent to the anthropology museum grounds.

Eating Near the Museum

The MOA café is decent for lunch. For better food, the UBC village on University Boulevard has several options. The Barn is a student-facing café with reliable sandwiches. If you’re heading back downtown, Kitsilano neighbourhood (30 minutes by bus, or the start of the long walk back) has excellent restaurants on West 4th Avenue: Nuba for Lebanese food (around CAD $20-25 per person), Tractor Foods for the quick affordable option.

The museum’s gift shop carries quality prints, books, and objects from First Nations artists and artisans, with proceeds benefiting the relevant communities. Better than most museum shops.