Canadian Museums

05/18/2026

Happy International Museum Day! Today, we celebrate the incredible spaces that preserve our history, spark our curiosity, and bring our communities together. Museums are far more than just buildings; they are the living heartbeat of our shared heritage, keeping our stories vibrant and accessible for generations to come.

At Canadian Museums, we are deeply proud to stand alongside the dedicated curators, visionaries, and cultural institutions across the nation who work tirelessly to connect us to our roots and inspire our future. Thank you for honouring our journeys and enriching our lives every single day.

Here’s to the keepers of our stories!

05/08/2026

1,825 Days of Culture. One Big Thank You.
Five years ago, we started with a vision to amplify Canadian culture. What began as an idea to support museums during the pandemic became a bridge — a bridge between the quiet echoes of our past and the vibrant, digital heartbeat of our future. Today, thanks to your trust, we’ve grown into a national community that reflects the identity, memory, and creative spirit of this country.

Canada is a land of vast distances and even deeper stories. Our heritage lives in the wood of the totem poles, the canvases of the Group of Seven, the living ecosystems of our zoos and aquariums, the gardens that hold the knowledge of the earth, and the countless artifacts safeguarded in our museums, galleries, heritage sites, and archives. For too long, these stories were bound by geography. Canadian Museums was born from a relentless vision: to ensure that our cultural legacy would never be left behind.

To our museums, galleries, zoos, aquariums, botanical gardens, heritage sites, and archives: thank you for letting us be part of your legacy. You have carried us through these first five years, and we want you with us as we shape the next chapter. Five years of Canadian Museums. Five years of honouring where we come from. And an open horizon ahead to show the world who we are.

We are the North. We are our stories. And we’re just getting started.

Follow our shared journey at www.canadian-museums.ca

05/04/2026

05/01/2026

Culture doesn't preserve itself. It is built, protected, and powered — every single day — by people most of the world will never know by name.

Today, on International Workers' Day, Canadian Museums stands with the curators, conservators, archivists, guides, technicians, educators, and volunteers who form the living spine of every museum, gallery, heritage site, archive, and cultural institution in this country and across the planet.

You work in the shadows of the very stories you protect. You handle what cannot be replaced. You answer questions that machines cannot yet fully understand. You open doors — sometimes literally — to children who will carry what they saw inside for the rest of their lives.

You are not caretakers of the past. You are the architects of collective memory. The engineers of cultural continuity. The reason civilization doesn't forget itself.

The cultural sector is not a footnote in the economy. It is a powerhouse run on human grit, intellectual passion, and a level of dedication that most industries wouldn't survive a single week without.

Our mission at Canadian Museums is simple: to build the sovereign digital infrastructure that powers your work, removes the friction that slows you down, and scales your impact far beyond the walls of any single institution. Because the people who protect humanity's legacy deserve the absolute best tools to carry it forward.

To the entire cultural workforce — in Canada and everywhere:
Your labour doesn't just shape our past. It builds our future.

Happy International Workers' Day. Let's keep building. 🏛️🇨🇦🚀

04/05/2026

Happy Easter from the entire team at Canadian Museums and our very own Arctic ambassador, Kanata! 🇨🇦

We hope your holiday weekend is filled with joy, family, friends, and a touch of cultural inspiration. As we celebrate the arrival of spring, don't forget to explore, support, and visit your local museums and heritage sites this season.

Discover more and join our cultural grid at: 👉 www.canadian-museums.ca

03/31/2026

He’s wondering why cultural institutions have to beg year after year just to avoid budget cuts. And why is culture always one of the lowest budgetary priorities, especially when it generates more revenue for the economy than many other industries in the country?

That's why Kanata isn't in the best of moods today.

03/28/2026

🇨🇦 Not a single cultural institution gets left behind. 🇨🇦
Our beloved Kanata v.2.0 is going offline for a few days — and trust us, it’s for the most Canadian reason imaginable.

When we first launched, Kanata was carrying a database of a few hundred institutions. But after our most recent national study, that number has skyrocketed to over 2,400 museums, galleries, cultural centres, and heritage spaces across Canada.
And we made a bold decision:
Not a single institution gets left behind.

Scaling Kanata to honour every corner of our cultural landscape — from the smallest community archive to the largest national museum — is a massive undertaking. Enriching the data, deepening the metadata, and ensuring every institution is represented with dignity and accuracy takes time, care, and a whole lot of love for our cultural ecosystem.

So while Kanata v.2.0 steps away for a short maintenance break, our team is working behind the scenes to bring you a richer, more powerful, more inclusive version of the platform than ever before.
Because Canadian culture deserves nothing less.
Stay tuned.

Kanata is coming back stronger.
Explore more at: www.canadian-museums.ca
Canadian Museums
Kanata the Bear

03/25/2026

The cultural sector in Canada generates a larger GDP contribution than the oil and gas extraction industry. Yet, our museums and heritage sites are constantly fighting for basic operational survival.

​Today, I had the privilege of sitting down for a candid, grounding conversation with Ryan Hunt, CEO of the Museum of Vancouver. We exchanged ideas not just about the symptoms of our underfunded industry, but about the root causes and the deep intersection of culture, inclusion, and true economic impact.

​Ryan is a powerhouse of advocacy for the sector. I have immense respect for his leadership at the MOV and his willingness to keep an open door for real, unfiltered dialogue about the future of our heritage.

​From our side at Canadian Museums, this is exactly the kind of community-driven dialogue we are actively seeking with institutions from coast to coast. Having just finalized the mapping of over 2,400 heritage organizations across the country, our mission is to build bridges. We want to walk together—combining grassroots digital innovation with institutional legacy—in true Canadian unity. 🍁

​The future of Canadian culture requires bold moves and unified grids. We are just getting started. 🇨🇦🏛️


​

​(Pictured: Julz Ríos, CEO & CTO of Canadian Museums, with Ryan Hunt, CEO of the Museum of Vancouver).

12/06/2025

Dear collaborators, partners, and friends of Canadian Museums:

With deep sadness and profound respect, I address you today on behalf of our institution to announce the passing of the great architect Frank Gehry, who passed away on December 5, 2025, at the age of 96.

A farewell to the architecture that transforms us

Frank Gehry was, without doubt, one of the giants of contemporary architecture. His work broke traditional molds: he abandoned rigidity, played with materials, forms, light, and space. With his bold approach, he turned buildings into sculptures, functional spaces into emotional experiences, and architectural design into art.

Works such as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao transformed not only urban landscapes but entire cities: his audacity reimagined what was possible in modern architecture.

Yet his legacy was not limited to Europe or the United States. One of the most notable examples is in Canada, in the renovation of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto: Gehry took a structure with decades of history and reinterpreted it with sensitivity, harmonizing tradition, modernity, light, wood, and glass—integrating past and future with elegance.

His impact on museums, galleries, and cultural spaces marked a turning point. His legacy transcends walls: it lies in the way we conceive human interaction with space, with light, with history, with emotion.

A profound loss on both a personal and generational level

For me, as founder and CEO of Canadian Museums, the news of his passing represents more than the farewell to a master: it is the loss of one of my greatest influences. It was Gehry who ignited in me the passion for architecture, who taught me that a building can be an act of poetic rebellion, a manifesto of creativity, a declaration of identity.

His death represents a sensitive loss for all of us who believe in architecture as living art—as a catalyst of emotions, transformation, and cultural identity.

But above all, it is a call to preserve his spirit. To keep his voice alive in every line, in every project, in every museum we dream of.

Our tribute from Canadian Museums

We will preserve in our design vision that spirit of courage, of experimentation, of respect for architectural emotion.

We will promote projects that honor Gehry’s audacity: designs that not only house art but are art themselves.

We will institute an internal recognition: every new exhibition or space we build will symbolically carry a “Gehry Light”—an invitation to think, dream, and build beyond the conventional.

Frank Gehry departs physically, but his work, his inspiration, his legacy will never cease to resonate. His voice lives in every impossible curve, in every museum that moves us, in every visitor who feels wonder.

To his family, loved ones, colleagues, and to the world that mourns his passing today: our deepest condolences and eternal gratitude.

And for us, at Canadian Museums, this loss also serves as living memory: that of a man who proved that architecture does not only build spaces… it builds dreams, memories, cultures, and humanity.

Rest in peace, Master Gehry. Thank you for teaching us to see—and to create—with different eyes.

Sincerely,

Julz Ríos
CEO – Canadian Museums