VANCOUVER.- Featuring 150 chairs from the Museum of Vancouver (MOV) collection, Deep-Seated Histories: Chairs from the Collection provides a glimpse into Vancouver’s cultural, social and industrial evolution. You’d be surprised to learn how this lowly piece of furniture can tell stories about notable Vancouverites and the City’s shifting thoughts on work, leisure, design, and neighbourhoods over time.


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Expect to see Seraphim “Joe” Fortes’ Morris Chair, which sat in his English Bay home, offering a spot to rest after teaching Vancouver’s children how to swim. Speculate what taking a break on a Fritz Hansen chair during a hectic “Dollar Forty-Nine Day” in the Woodward’s employee dining room was like. Imagine sitting in the director style chairs at Theatre Under the Stars when Pearl Hendrix appeared in the 1951 version of Hit the Deck. Consider the decade-long fight with the Canada Border Services Agency witnessed by the custom-made bar stool for Little Sister’s Book & Art Emporium. Explore these histories and more as part of this exhibition.


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Plus, in keeping with our love of neon, the 1965 Brooks Corning Office Furniture Store neon sign will also be part of Deep-Seated Histories, along with a selection of mid-century modern chairs made by Vancouver designers.

“Chairs are objects we barely notice—until we sit with their histories. This exhibition invites you to see chairs and other forms of seating as witnesses to the layered histories of Vancouver. These objects connect us to Vancouver’s shifting identities—its colonial legacies, its communities of resistance, and its moments of change and innovation.” —Denise Fong, Curator of Urban Cultures at MOV

The exhibition includes research from historians and many other community contributors as well as students from SFU’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology and UBC’s Department of History.