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| One of the many views inside Edmonton's West Edmonton Mall. Source. |
When you visit a new city, what’s usually on the top of your “must-see” list? As museum people, we’re more than a little biased towards museums and galleries. But, I’ve been heartened when hosting guests from out of Toronto on their eagerness to visit both the ROM and AGO. I recently spoke with a colleague who is going on a work trip to Edmonton. What was one of the top sights on his list? The mall.
via GIPHY (source)
As a born and raised Edmontonian, I’ve got mall culture deeply ingrained. Edmonton is home to West Edmonton Mall (WEM), the largest shopping mall in North America, and the location of my part-time gig during undergrad. It’s a huge space filled mostly with the same stores we’ve got here in Toronto at the Eaton Centre, with a few hidden gems of locally owned places spread throughout the endless hallways.
It’s important to note that I’m far from the first person to consider the similarities between shopping malls and museums. Anna Zhelnina’s article “‘It’s Like a Museum Here’: The Shopping Mall as Public Space” talks about research carried out at malls in urban Russia. This relates to museum and museum-like spaces as places to see and be seen, where “visitors […] carry out informal monitoring based on their own ideas of what constitutes “right” and “wrong” behaviours for this place.” (source) This is similar to the observation I made in my last article about the symphony, another flashback to well-known museum academic Tony Bennett!
Looking at the example of WEM, the mall is full of intriguing attractions that we might not expect to see on a shopping trip. Kitschy theme streets are vaguely reminiscent of the themed galleries in museums - Europa Boulevard, Chinatown, and BRBN Street all can be found. Europa Boulevard is especially interesting. It plays on a lot of cliches Canadians might have about Europe. The walls are made to look (somewhat cheesily) as if you are in an outdoor shopping street, surrounded by ornate and colourful old buildings. This street also holds a lot of the higher end and more expensive stores in West Ed.
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| Europe Boulevard. Notice the beautiful building facades. Source. |
Another thing that you might expect to see in a museum over a mall is an aquarium. The Marine Life part of WEM has a variety of educational programming, a lot of which is designed to tie into the Alberta education curriculum. Teachers can apply to have educators visit their classrooms, similar to many museum outreach programs. Here in Toronto, it can be compared to the ROM’s travelling education kits.
While I definitely wouldn’t advocate for replacing museums with malls, it’s intriguing to think about how the two function similarly as public spaces, places to provide entertainment and enjoyment, and even in some cases, act as educators.
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