Paper short abstract:

The Asian collection at the Museum of Anthropology at University of British Columbia or MOA is the largest collection at the museum. This paper considers classes and community visits, using the diverse Asian collection at MOA.

Paper long abstract:

The Museum of Anthropology at University of British Columbia (UBC) or MOA, Vancouver is known for its Northwest Coast First Nations collection, but the Asian collection is the largest collection at the museum in terms of number of the items, and around 40% of the entire collection. Vancouver also has a large population of people with Asian heritage, over 40 % of the city’s population. However, given the limited space in the permanent galleries to showcase this large, diverse Asian collection at MOA, it instead gets used for teaching, research and community engagements regularly as a way to activate the collection. This paper considers some examples of actual classes – often non-anthropological classes – of using the Asian collection at MOA, and also how community members, especially Indigenous groups, have engaged with the collection. This paper explores how the museum’s relationship with students or community members becomes reciprocal when activating the collection. It will also ask what the museum learns and unlearns by hosting and working with them and to whom the collection belongs to.