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The great risk of losing our Maritime Museum

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The Maritime Museum of B.C.'s former home in Victoria was a nationally listed historic site that opened in 1889 as B.C.'s first permanent courthouse.

The continuing saga of the Maritime Museum of B.C. leaves me frustrated and despondent and — if I’m honest — more than a little concerned about our city, indeed our society as a whole.

I have worked in the world of museums for 30 years. In that time, I’ve been fortunate to travel widely to witness a kind of golden age of museums. There are more museums in the world and more people visit museums than at any time in history. In Sweden, three out of four adults will visit a museum this year. In the U.S., more people go to museums than all the big-league sporting events and theme parks combined.

Why? You would think that in the digital age, museums would be less relevant, not more. We can get any information we desire at the click of a mouse. We can enter digitally created worlds. We spend our time connected to our phones. What place is there for a museum?

The great paradox is this: As we step further into a world that is increasingly virtual and commercial, we need physical museums even more. It turns out that museums are really good for us — for our economy, for our quality of life and for our humanity.

Museums are proven engines of the economy. Look at the renaissance of the city of Bilbao in Spain after the opening of the Guggenheim Bilbao, the effect of the Riverside Museum in Glasgow, Te Papa Tongarewa in New Zealand or the Royal Tyrrell Museum that has generated more than $1 billion for the economy of Drumheller in Alberta.

Building a really good museum sends a signal to the world. Museums help cities to express their brand: Paris and the Louvre, London and the British Museum, Amsterdam and the Rijksmuseum. The city and its museums send a message to the world about the quality of life that the city has to offer.

Great cities — large and small — have great museums. This formula is rock-solid. There are no great cities without great museums.

More fundamentally, we human beings need museums. Our life experiences are increasingly virtual, rather than real. Everything is a commodity. And it is in this world that museums show their true value: where people can find their story, where people can escape the digital and commercial cacophony, where we encounter real things and are provoked to think about the wonder, beauty and fragility of our existence.

I don’t want to focus on the events that allowed our Maritime Museum to be brought so low. Instead, I urge our municipal and provincial leaders to raise their level of discourse about the question of the museum.

I urge them to consider these questions:

If the Maritime Museum dies, where will our community’s deep and fascinating maritime heritage be protected and portrayed?

What kind of city do we want Victoria to be — a collection of tourist shops, or a city of substantive character?

How important is the quality of life of our citizens? Do they have great museums and galleries to enjoy and in which to learn about their own story?

Is our government’s greatest accomplishment the lowering of taxes, or is there a responsibility to shape a better way of life for its citizens?

Last month, I taught a course in Leeuwarden in northern Holland. Like Victoria, it is the capital of a province (Friesland), but it is significantly smaller than Victoria. Nor is it a tourist destination. And yet, to my astonishment, I found in Leeuwarden a brand-new provincial museum and a gorgeous national ceramics museum. The citizens of Leeuwarden value their heritage with a passion. We could learn a few things from them.

To borrow from Dylan Thomas, we must not allow the Maritime Museum to go gently into that good night.

Tim Willis is a museum consultant and former vice-president of visitor experience at the Royal B.C. Museum.