A single stuffed owl and grainy, closed-circuit-television footage tracking visitors’ every move in an unlit room. A shadow-puppet theatre that invites guests to contort their fingers into the shapes of crabs, coyotes, and other creatures. And a Roosevelt elk bursting through a wallpapered dining room, head illuminated under the glow of a pendant lamp as though it’s the guest of honour at an intimate dinner party. These may seem like unlikely scenes in your typical nature-centric exhibition, but then again, the Museum of Vancouver’s Wild Things: The Power of Nature in Our Lives is anything but ordinary.

Old-style museums—the kind typified by Night at the Museum—had a different approach. They would “use their natural-history specimens in these kind of superillustrated and detailed dioramas, so that people would understand what the real environment was,” Viviane Gosselin, Wild Things cocurator and the MOV’s director of collections and exhibitions, explains during a media tour of the recently unveiled showcase. “We’re not trying to do that.”

Indeed, the Kitsilano institution is weaving elements of nature—including plants, dirt, and taxidermy—with personal anecdotes, interactive components, and creative storytelling that, together, aim to connect Vancouverites with the wildlife that surrounds them. In this sense, Wild Things, co-curated by artist-educator Lee Beavington in celebration of local nonprofit group Nature Vancouver’s centenary, is no textbook walk-through. Rather, it’s an immersive, multiroom art installation, where the most curious and adventurous among us—those willing to delve beyond the surface via crawlable tunnels, or peer into tiny peepholes piercing a mini climbing wall—will be rewarded.

“We’re inspired by visual art and visual artists’ work and installations, videography, and animation, because we know other museums—natural-history museums, the Vancouver Aquarium—are doing their work in environmental education,” says Gosselin. “So, we try, as an urban museum, to frame it a little differently and really ask people to…reflect on their personal relationship with nature.”

The first half of Wild Things is dubbed the Encounter Room and features four separate vignettes that bring to life vivid experiences with rain, salmon, owls, and elk, as recalled by local residents. One woman’s meeting with a school of salmon crossing a flooded road is accompanied by a projection of the fish atop sheets of acetate swaying gently below two fans so that the critters appear to be swimming along the museum’s walls. In another space, Squamish Nation cultural worker and weaver Tracy Williams speaks about the significance of hunting—and the intimate understanding of nature it requires—in her family. The story is broadcast as an audio loop, which guests can take in while seated at a dining room table opposite a stuffed elk.

“They kind of tend to a variety of emotions,” Gosselin says of the Encounter Room’s themes, “rain being more about contemplation; salmon about beauty; owl about this kind of unsettling relationship or scary encounter you can have [with nature]; and the elk is really about provocation.”

The Engagement Room, meanwhile, embodies a more traditional museum experience, where four “learning pods”—the Unknown, the Land Ethic, Web of Relationships, and Language and Story—are packed with drawers full of flora and fauna specimens, nature books, and interesting facts that help cultivate a deeper grasp and appreciation of the living, breathing beings that inhabit the Lower Mainland. Visitors can get acquainted with tardigrades or water bears—“Earth’s most resilient animal”—or don headphones to hear the different calls of regional bird species such as the barn swallow and Pacific wren.

Careful thought is given to the region’s Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples throughout, with one drawer offering guests a pronunciation crash course in the Squamish language. Sustainability is another overarching theme, and 70 percent of Encounter is constructed from upcycled materials obtained from local film sets—something the MOV hopes to continue with its future exhibitions. “This is not a one-time deal,” Gosselin stresses. “We want this to be a practice we embrace for all projects.”

Wild Things consistently challenges urbanites to be more kind to—and respectful of—Mother Nature. “We feel sometimes that, living in Vancouver, we live in a postcard because the environment is so present,” Gosselin notes. “But at the same time, perhaps, we don’t ask ourselves enough questions like ‘How do I feel about this? How much time do I spend actually in nature or am I always busy at work, at home, and not considering the place of nature in my life?’ ”

The Museum of Vancouver presents Wild Things: The Power of Nature in Our Lives until September 2019.