Purpose & History

The Marianne and Edward Gibson Art Museum’s purpose is to encourage open and inclusive learning about our past, current, and future worlds by supporting the work of critically engaged and research-driven visual artists. We organize exhibitions, public commissions, publications, residencies, and a diverse array of public programs, within the context of Simon Fraser University—a public research university known for its radical beginnings and commitment to community engagement and interdisciplinary research.

Over the past four years, our priority work has been focused on developing the Marianne and Edward Gibson Art Museum, a new, purpose-built facility on Burnaby Mountain. Upon its launch in Fall 2025, the Gibson consolidates SFU Galleries' activities into a single, larger, and vastly more accessible spatial platform, capable of serving far broader audiences. We know that art galleries on university campuses have historically been exclusionary, so our goal in developing the Gibson has been to listen to and learn from underserved communities in order to challenge prevailing ideas about visual art spaces (themselves shaped by assimilationist western pedagogies). Our aim is to create a new kind of art museum that lowers barriers to those who have historically felt excluded, embraces intergenerational, decolonial learning, and encourages cross-disciplinary inquiry and meaningful encounters with art.

The Gibson stands on the stolen ancestral territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaɬ, and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm Nations. Acknowledging that the activities of the Gibson Art Museum unfold on colonized Indigenous land is a recognition that settler colonialism is an ongoing structure. It is also a commitment to support the capacity of art to unsettle these conditions.