Museums - New Brunswick Museum

Saint John, New Brunswick, is Canada’s oldest incorporated city and it houses Canada's oldest continuing museum. Though the New Brunswick Museum was officially incorporated as the “Provincial Museum” in 1929 and received its current name in 1930, its history goes back to 1842.
Abraham Gesner was born in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, in 1797. He studied medicine in London, England, but eventually became a geologist. In 1842, Gesner opened the Museum of Natural History in one room of the Mechanics’ Institute on Carleton Street in Saint John. Unfortunately, Gesner’s ambition was greater than his business acumen and in 1843 his collection passed on to his creditors, who, in turn, donated it to the Mechanics’ Institute. Renamed the Mechanics’ Institute Museum in 1846, an annual report dating from 1863 described it as, “A large and valuable collection of minerals, a great variety of zoological specimens, and many Chinese, Indian and other curiosities [that] frequently receives additions from foreign sea captains and others who get into their possession foreign articles of an attractive description.”
The Mechanics’ Institute closed in 1890 and the collection went through several more permutations until it finally settled in its present location in 1992, with 60,000 square feet of exhibition space and greatly expanded collections in which nineteenth-century decorative arts and Canadiana are prominent. Also included in its collection are works from Aboriginal Canada, Africa, Oceania, and Central and South America.