All Attractions
Spring Break
March 25 to April 2
Open daily from 10 am to 5 pm
See Planetarium show
schedule, here.
We look forward to seeing you!
Face masks are strongly recommended for all
visitors (age 5+) at the Manitoba Museum.
Click for Holiday Hours
Hours of operation vary for different holidays.
What are the Factors that Make an Exhibit “Iconic”? In the last little while we have been working on the plan for a new exhibit in the Museum’s Earth History Gallery, which will be focused on a large specimen that we recently added to the collections. Around here we like to refer to the specimen and the planned exhibit as “iconic.” But what does iconic really mean? And…
Michael Cuggy (L) and Dave Rudkin discussing specimen notes. Those of you who are familiar only with the exhibits and the other “front end” parts of the Museum might be surprised at the constant changes that take place in the hidden parts of the institution. You might think that the dusty backrooms would remain the same from decade to decade, but really it is a whirl: exhibits are built in the workshop…
I have often been told by members of the public that, “it must be so exciting to do paleontological fieldwork.” This is true, it can be very exciting to visit new places, to discover and collect fossils that were previously unknown to science. But often the conditions are such that the fieldwork is more of a necessary evil. It is a step that must be passed to acquire essential specimens,…
Looking through my window at the still-snowy, still-wintry Winnipeg streetscape, I have to remind myself that spring is not far away. Soon the snow will leave and we will again be able to begin one of the most pleasurable of the Museum’s activities: fieldwork. Last year, between various other projects, I worked with Bob Elias (University of Manitoba) and Ed Dobrzanski on gathering information that we could use in a…
Winnipeg has a long and complicated history of museums featuring natural history collections. Our current museum was a centennial project, opened in 1970, but we are very fortunate that we possess vestiges of those earlier museums, such as minerals from the Carnegie Library collection and mounted animals from some of the early taxidermists. The most visible and best-documented of these “inheritances” are pieces that were exhibited in the old…
When I started this blog a couple of years ago, one of my main intentions was to share the various items and phenomena that are within close reach of my desk, here on the 4th floor of the Museum tower. With that in mind, and since at lunchtime on New Year’s Eve we have reached a point in the year where serious and scholarly content should not be expected, I…
This has been a year rich in exhibit work, and we are finishing off with a bit of a bang. About a week ago we finished installation of our latest Discovery Room exhibit, a collaboration between Zoology and Paleontology entitled The World is Their Oyster: Marvellous Molluscs. As with the other D-Room exhibits we have produced (such as Jaws and Teeth and Colours in Nature), this was a collaborative effort. It…
It is 7 am, somewhere on the curves near Woodlands, Manitoba, and the sky is still completely dark. The rain is coming down harder now and approaching headlights are blurred by the slicked windshield. I usually love the open road, but this driving is far from fun. We are well past Lundar before the late dawn. The traffic has diminished now and the rain has eased a bit, but the…
The Manitoba Museum is home to many unusual and unique specimens. Among the most remarkable is the world’s largest complete trilobite, the holotype specimen of the species Isotelus rex. Over the years we have occasionally received requests from other museums for replicas of this striking fossil. More than a decade ago, before the specimen ever went on exhibit, we had a mould prepared by an outside contractor who also made…
Ed Dobrzanski is a “fixture” at the Museum. He had been a volunteer here before I started back in in 1993, and he has volunteered continuously for the past 20 years. Ed has done tremendous work as an amateur paleontologist, collecting, preparing, studying, identifying, and cataloguing fossils. He has contributed to paleontological field and laboratory work in a great variety of ways. For his all-round efforts, many of us are…
The Manitoba Museum acknowledges we are on Treaty No.1 land, the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg and Ininíwak. These lands, water, and waterways are the unceded territories of the Dakota, and the homeland of the Métis Nation. The Museum is committed to reflecting the continued legacy of all the original peoples of this province, including the Ithiniwak, Denesułine, Anishininiwak, Inuit, and Nakota.
We acknowledge the harms of the past, are committed to improving relationships in the spirit of reconciliation, and appreciate the opportunity to live and learn on these traditional lands in mutual respect.
Manitoba Museum is accredited by Imagine Canada for excellence in non-profit accountability, transparency and governance.
