A Bold New Art Museum Opens on SFU’s Burnaby Mountain Campus

Simon Fraser University will open the landmark Marianne and Edward Gibson Art Museum on its Burnaby Mountain campus on Saturday, Sept. 20.

The institution, made possible by a visionary gift from the Gibson Family Trust, marks the beginning of a new cultural legacy for the university, with its first purpose-built art museum and a vibrant new home for art, ideas and community connection.

Edward Gibson joined the university in 1965 as one of SFU’s charter faculty members. During his 30-year career at SFU, he shaped the university’s commitment to arts, culture and community engagement through his passion for accessibility, diversity and the role that art plays in enhancing teaching and research.

In honour of his legacy, the Gibson is more than a museum — it is a dynamic learning centre, sparking cross-disciplinary dialogue, hands-on inquiry and intergenerational engagement.

Featuring an award-winning design by Siamak Hariri, founding partner of Toronto-based Hariri Pontarini Architects, in partnership with Vancouver-based Iredale Architecture, the single-floor, 12,100-square-foot museum is defined by its unique polygonal form and expansive windows that draw in the natural landscape and foster a sense of openness.

“Our desire for natural light in the Gibson, for bringing the outside in, stems in part from Dr. Gibson’s own belief, as an urban geographer, in art’s connection to its surroundings,” says Kimberly Phillips, director of the Gibson. “Because of this, we felt the Gibson must be a space that is open to the world, allowing the artwork presented within it to engage with the very environment from which it emerged.”

The museum’s open design was also informed by SFU’s commitment to inclusivity.

“Art museums on university campuses can be intimidating and exclusionary places,” Phillips says. “Our goal has been to listen to and learn from people with many different lived experiences, abilities and backgrounds, in order to create a space that feels warm, welcoming and comfortable for all to spend time within — like an informal living room.”

Titled Edge Effects, the Gibson’s first exhibition explores the museum’s position at the edge of the university and the public. Ecologists use the term “edge effect” to describe the conditions created when two adjacent ecological communities meet. Edge conditions might be narrow and severe, like those of a forest meeting farmed land, or porous and deep, like the brackish water of a river estuary. Such zones are interesting to scientists because they allow for a rich and complex coexistence between species that would otherwise never interact.

Each of the 15 artists whose works are drawn together to celebrate the Gibson’s inauguration considers edges — whether conceptual, material, temporal or geopolitical — in compelling ways.

Some projects query SFU’s own archived histories and collections, while others consider legacies of Indigenous-settler relations, international borders and city dwellers’ right to movement. Still others imagine how edges might be activated to inhabit futures differently, whether by offering a disarmingly tender reconsideration of a domestic task, listening to the path of water, proposing a new platform for sustenance or conjuring a community of timid forest spirits.

Each artist developed new work specifically for this exhibition or presents projects never before seen by audiences in Canada. A suite of multi-generational programming, including artist performances and talks, exhibition tours and weekend art studio sessions for children and their families, will punctuate the exhibition throughout the fall and winter months.

This weekend’s inaugural events include an opening reception on Saturday, Sept. 20, from 2 to 5 p.m., and an artist talk with Patrick Cruz, Sameer Farooq and Jared Stanley with Gibson director Kimberly Phillips on Sunday, Sept. 21, from 2 to 3:30 p.m.

The Gibson is open to the public Wednesday through Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is always free and open to all.