On January 23, 24, and the evening of January 26, 2010, Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver BC (MOA) will celebrate the completion of its multi-year, multi-million dollar Renewal Project with a free public extravaganza of music, dance, multimedia performances, and the opening of a major new exhibition of contemporary work by twelve international artists, “Border Zones: New Art Across Cultures”, in their beautiful new Audain Gallery. The new brand is also simply expressed in a tagline that signals their unmistakably bold new direction: “A place of world arts + cultures.”
The launch of the new facilities in January 2010 will signal a new era and a new direction for the Museum. The museum now stands poised to celebrate as never before its collections from around the world – Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Americas, and Europe, as well as their deep and rich collections from – and connections with – the First Nations of the Northwest Coast of British Columbia.
To reflect the excitement of this new global vision for MOA, the museum realized it needed a fresh new look to go with it. In early fall, they began working with “Outside in Communications” to rebrand the Museum.
The new brand is a bold and evocative expression of our aspirations for the future: it’s fresh, bright, contemporary, elegant, and yet dynamic. To achieve this beautiful visual mark, the creative team began searching for commonalities between cultures across time and place. They found that for many cultures, the desire to find order governing truth and beauty in nature is unified by a common pursuit of symmetry and geometrical perfection.
For example, in the Far East, perfection is embodied by the yin-yang symbol. In India and Tibet, mandalas are geometrical symbols of spiritual and ritual significance. Mathematical patterns such as the ‘Golden Ratio’ and the ‘Fibonacci Sequence’ are played out to exquisite perfection in our solar system, music, in ancient times the Pyramids, and today in modernist architecture. One can see it expressed everywhere in nature in the petal structure of flowers. But perhaps its most striking expression is the ‘phyllotaxis spiral’ seen in the structure of pine cones, sea urchins, sunflower centers, and so on. MOA’s new mark is a phyllotaxis spiral, reminding us of the laws and geometries that shape the world and create symbolic links to our evolving anthropology – life on earth as human beings.
The brand is also simply expressed in a tagline that signals their unmistakably bold new direction: “A place of world arts + cultures.”
Right now, the staff is busy redesigning all of online and printed materials to reflect the new brand. By the new year – in time for the launch of the ‘new’ MOA on January 23, 24, and 26, 2010 – they will have completed the brand transformation, as well as renovations to their galleries. Stay tuned for details on our January launch – this is one party you won’t want to miss!
www.moa.ubc.ca
