Virtual visits Museums, galleries offering online tours as a break from COVID-induced cabin fever By: Frances Koncan Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Monday, Mar. 23, 2020

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/03/2020 (1697 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Museums and galleries across the city may be shut down, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take a virtual tour of the exhibits and collections currently on display from the comfort of your own home. Here are five local museums and galleries offering virtual tours of their collections.

Canadian Museum for Human Rights

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights rolled out its new virtual tour last week.

In the 20-minute video, a museum tour guide takes viewers on a 360-degree journey through the Indigenous Perspectives gallery and Canadian Journeys gallery. Stops on the tour include an 800-year-old moccasin print, a floor projection entitled Lights of Inclusion and an exhibition devoted to human rights defender Viola Desmond, the Nova Scotia activist who appears on the $10 bill. 

Winnipeg Art Gallery

While the Winnipeg Art Gallery is currently closed, there is no shortage of art available online for art lovers.

WAG CEO and director Stephen Borys is sharing a daily post featuring a piece of art from the WAG collection every day, along with a short reflection on the piece, and the entire WAG collection is available online through the WAG@Home program.

You can find Borys’ daily reflections and the WAG collections online at wag.ca.

Dalnavert Museum

Dalnavert Museum is a historic house located in downtown Winnipeg. The Victorian mansion was built in 1895 and was home to Sir Hugh John MacDonald, son of Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. MacDonald.

While currently closed to the public, the museum has an online virtual tour of the period-decorated house that you can click through (it also works on mobile). It also features specific points throughout the space where you can learn more about what life was like at Dalnavert in 1919, the year of the Winnipeg General Strike. 

The online tour is available here.

Transcona Historical Museum

An often overlooked area of the city when it comes to cultural offerings, Transcona happens to feature a museum that hosts its entire collection online.

The Transcona Historical Museum explores the impact both world wars had on the small railway town that eventually became part of the City of Winnipeg. Railway workers from Transcona were deemed to be essential during both wars, as they were instrumental in maintaining the national railway system that transported supplies and troops across the country.

While not as technologically advanced as the virtual tours offered by larger organizations, the gallery nonetheless boasts a huge collection of interesting artifacts that tell thought-provoking stories about the past residents of the neighbourhood.

Take a look at the Transcona Museum online.

Prairie Pollination

Prairie Pollination, created by the Manitoba Museum for the Virtual Museum of Canada program run by the Canadian Heritage Information Network, is an online collection of exhibits and galleries.

Features include a behind-the-scenes tour of the natural history vault at the Manitoba Museum, hosted by Diana Bizecki Robson, that explores the way research specimens are stored, and an expanation of why the Small White Lady’s Slipper is so sneaky from University of Manitoba professor Anne Worley. Also available is a gallery of endangered Prairie plants and possible ways to save them.

You can also play games, such as Honey Hunt, where you become a pollinator and have to avoid predators while gathering nectar to make into honey.

A gallery and virtual tour of plant life on the Prairies is available here.

Frances.Koncan@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @franceskoncan

Frances Koncan
Arts reporter

Frances Koncan (she/her) is a writer, theatre director, and failed musician of mixed Anishinaabe and Slovene descent. Originally from Couchiching First Nation, she is now based in Treaty 1 Territory right here in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

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