WHAT'S NEXT AT YOUR MUSEUM?

call on our ability to be relationshipfocused, nimble and open-minded, and in doing so, provide phenomenal opportunities to learn and grow.

I am excited to lead this multiyear commitment to engagement across the province. We have a responsibility to create community connections, welcoming gathering spaces, educational programs and thought-provoking experiences for people of all ages. Along with the board, staff members and volunteers of the Royal BC Museum, I look forward to creating something new and inspiring together with you.

With my best,

WHAT’LL BLOW MY MIND THIS SUMMER?

Angkor: The Lost Empire of Cambodia, a bona fide blockbuster feature exhibition about a spiritual, cultural and architectural marvel.

Jun 2, 2023–Jan 14, 2024.

WHAT’S THAT EARTHSHAKING ROAR?

It’s the star of SUE: The T. rex Experience, an immersive feature exhibition about prehistory’s most fearsome predator, opening on the third floor. Jun 16, 2023–Feb 16, 2024.

DON’T LOCAL DINOS DESERVE LOVE TOO?

They sure do! That’s why we’re bringing you Dinosaurs of BC, a feature exhibition showcasing the museum’s palaeontology team and the beautiful prehistoric beasts that once called BC home.

Apr 17, 2023–Jan 7, 2024.

February 2022. I have focused much of my attention this past year on the people and culture of the museum: listening to staff members one-on-one over coffee; discussing the organization’s priorities, struggles and ambitions; and working collaboratively in all-day sessions with the staff to understand our values and vision for the future. It’s been inspiring and gratifying to do this hard work because the focus is always on people. If last year was one of learning, this year is decidedly one of action with new exhibitions and experiences, province-wide engagement and a focus on people and community at the centre of all we do. As such, I’m thrilled to let you know that unlike any year before, we will be hosting multiple feature exhibitions simultaneously in 2023, with

I am pleased to share that SUE: The T. rex Experience will be featured in our third-floor galleries, marking the first time we welcome the public back to engage with an exhibit in this space in over a year. The third-floor experience will be different from how you remember it, and although part of it will continue to be closed off to the public, we are committed to hearing from you about what you would like to see in future galleries.

To facilitate this work on future exhibits, we started the process of province-wide community engagement in January, asking British Columbians to let us know what they imagine for the future of the Royal BC Museum.

We are committed to rethinking the future of the museum in an intentional and collaborative way. By fundamentally changing our approach, we allow the museum to shift from being a storyteller on behalf of others to a facilitator of storytelling. It will

Alicia Dubois CEO

WE ARE LISTENING...WITH OPEN MINDS

We want to hear your thoughts and ideas about the future of the Royal BC Museum. We welcome the perspectives of all British Columbians. Connect with us at rbcm.ca/engage

CAN I SHARE SOMETHING WITH YOU?

Please do, at the Community Gallery, a new collaborative online exhibition space. You’re invited to explore the gallery and share your beautiful images and big ideas. Visit community.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca

WHAT’S HAPPENING ON THE THIRD FLOOR?

A lot. SUE: The T. rex Experience will reign supreme on the third floor. Some areas remain closed, but we’ll be inviting community engagement participants into beloved gallery spaces to help us reimagine them.

We are here to answer your questions about the Royal BC Museum. Come join the conversation.

During childhood visits to the Royal BC Museum, I always raced to the woolly mammoth diorama to marvel at the replica and touch the wall of ice in the great animal’s foreground. The icy wall (smoothed by thousands of kids’ warm fingers) was one of those small but memorable touches that made the museum feel incredibly well-designed and immersive. The touch of ice—and the scent of spice that wafted from the kitchen in Old Town—continued to be a little highlight for me and for many visitors over the decades.

As the Royal BC Museum moves toward modernization, it’s hard not to fantasize about all the mindful, magical, multi-sensory details we could include to help breathe life into our galleries and exhibits, whether existing or envisioned for the future. But before we get to the nittygritty genius of creating immersive experiences, we are focused on answering larger and far more challenging questions, like whether we— in our core galleries, learning programs and digital spaces—are reflecting a truly diverse representation of community stories and histories from across BC. We know the answer: we aren’t yet. But we are determined to get there. This is why we’re welcoming the opportunity to engage with people throughout the province about the museum’s future. We want to do things right. We want to listen to as many people as we can. We want to know what you think a modern Royal BC Museum might look and feel (and even smell) like. We are focused on modernization because we are passionate about our work and our role. You’d be hard pressed to find a staff member who feels blasé about the impact of the museum, or feels meh about making the museum experience better. We don’t yet know what “better” means to all people, but we expect it will mean being more inclusive. It might include rethinking how much we tell people’s stories and instead inviting communities to tell their own. It will probably mean more access to the museum and archives collections, and to staff, to plumb their knowledge and expertise. Our first step on the long, winding path toward modernization is community engagement.

Janet Hanuse, Vice President of Engagement and DRIPA Implementation, and CEO Alicia Dubois, are leading the process of community engagement. We asked Janet a few questions about this process, which launched in January 2023.

Erik Lambertson: Janet, what do you hope that people experience in this first round of community engagement?

Janet Hanuse: I hope that British Columbians get the opportunity to learn more about what the Royal BC Museum provides, in terms of services, programs and stories about BC's history. I also hope that we get to build on and improve existing relationships—and build new relationships—with the general public, with First Nations communities and with other culturally based communities who haven’t yet had the opportunity to share their stories.

Erik: What excites you about the whole process of community engagement?

Janet: The sense of empowerment that communities feel, and the sense of inclusion. Communities feel that they are heard, that their voices are valued and that they actually have a say in the stories. That gives British Columbians a sense of shared ownership of our culture, our stories, and our existence in BC. And it empowers us to tell a better story. I find that exciting.

Erik: When you're heading into a room for community engagement, whether that's a room with chairs or a virtual one like Zoom, what kind of mood or tone are you hoping to set?

Janet: Well, I don't expect to control the mood! But in terms of tone, I hope that we can create space to foster a tone of collaboration, inclusion and shared decision-making. I hope that we create a sense of community, where we’re opening arms to each other.

Erik: Are there any communities or regions that you're particularly excited to visit and learn more from?

Janet: I’m keen to inform all of our communities whose belongings we have in our collection, whether they're Indigenous or non-Indigenous. My reason for that is to make sure that the Royal BC Museum is relevant in the eyes of British Columbia.

Erik: It seems that so much of community engagement is really about listening. What do you think makes a particularly good listener?

Janet: A good listener, first of all, is somebody who does exactly that: who listens and doesn't necessarily always need to speak or to respond. A good listener is somebody who considers their responses carefully and ensures that they are actually attending to the needs of what's being said or the priorities that are being shared. So, sitting quietly, hearing the good and the bad, leaning in during those tough moments, and committing to the conversation to see it through, so that at the end, whether we agree or disagree or whether it's resolved or not resolved, we at least have enough of a relationship to continue the discussions.

To learn more about community engagement, including details about participating in upcoming in-person and virtual sessions, visit rbcm.ca/engage.

Brian Cooley is a world-renowned artist based out of Calgary, Alberta. His life-size dinosaur sculptures have appeared on the cover of National Geographic magazine, in the exhibit halls of the Royal Tyrrell Museum and even at Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park in Florida, USA.

Beginning in April, one of his dinosaurs will prowl the halls of the Royal BC Museum and other museums across the province.

I had the great pleasure of working with Brian over the last year on a very special sculpture—a life-size version of “Buster” the Ferrisaurus. Buster is a dinosaur specimen I’ve been studying since 2005. He’s a relative of the iconic Triceratops, but without the long horns and frill. He’s also much closer to the size of a sheep than his frilled cousin would have been.

In 2019, my colleague David Evans, the Temerty Chair of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum, and I announced that Buster was a new species of dinosaur unique to British Columbia. We gave him the scientific name Ferrisaurus sustutensis, which means “the iron lizard from the Sustut River.”

Buster’s bones were displayed in the museum’s Pocket Gallery between September 2019 and March 2020.

While no doubt special, Buster’s skeleton is incomplete, which can make it hard to picture what he might have looked like while he was alive. To

How do you make a lifelike replica of a dinosaur that’s been dead for 68 million years?

Thankfully, some of Buster’s closest relatives, like Leptoceratops, Montanoceratops and Cerasinops, are known from relatively complete skeletons, which let me fill in many of the missing pieces, like what Buster’s skull would have looked like or how long his tail should be. With a solid knowledge of comparative anatomy, I was able to make some pretty good guesses about the musculature that would have held his skeleton together and what his skin would have looked like over top of that.

To help give us an idea of what position the final sculpture would be in, Brian started out by building a tiny version of the skeleton that could be posed in different ways, so we could decide what pose the final sculpture should take. A series of pencil sketches roughed out the model even further and gave me an opportunity to give detailed pointers on things like how many claws were on Buster’s hand or how thick the tail should be. Then it was time to move on to a full-scale model.

Buster’s colour pattern is very loosely based on the modern caiman lizard. What we wound up with is an amazing, lifelike model of what Buster the Ferrisaurus might have looked like when he scurried around the redwood forests of British Columbia 68 million years ago.

As an added bonus, our talented exhibits team is working on creating help with this, we displayed Buster’s bones on a life-size outline of his body so visitors could see what parts of the skeleton were preserved and roughly what size and shape he was. a miniature 3D printed version of this model using a special technique called photogrammetry. This process involves taking dozens of photos of the model and using special computer software to align those photos to create a 3D digital model. This mini-Buster will be placed near the life-size model and will be safe to touch, giving visitors one more way to connect with this amazing ancient denizen of British

When I was asked to develop a new travelling exhibit—what has now become Dinosaurs of BC, set to debut in 2023—I knew I wanted to share Buster with the people of British Columbia in a new way. That’s where Brian Cooley comes in.

In the spring of 2021, the Royal BC Museum contracted Brian to create a version of Buster that would be the next best thing to seeing him in the flesh. But with only a few pieces of the skeleton to work with, how do we know what Buster should look like?

Brian used photos and measurements of Buster’s skeleton and other leptoceratopsids to create a steel armature with the right proportions. A layer of clay creates the muscles over the metal bones, and then he sculpted the details of the skin, including wrinkles and scales. This clay-covered model would be too heavy and easily damaged to display in the museum or take on the road, so an exact replica made of fibrereinforced polyester resin was created to make him nice and durable.

It was then time to paint Buster— but what colour was Ferrisaurus? We don’t know for sure, so Brian took inspiration from modern animals. He looked at species that need to camouflage themselves from predators, but which may also have brightly coloured areas to attract mates.

Dive into prehistoric British Columbia and get up close and personal with the iron lizard of the Sustut River and the other dinosaurs that once roamed the province’s mountains, forests and rivers.