News release details

Magna Carta exhibition closes after welcoming over 11,000 visitors

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) is getting ready to welcome a new hands‐on exhibit for children next month after bidding farewell to Magna Carta.

"XOXO: An Exhibit About Love and Forgiveness" will open to visitors inside the Museum's new Level 1 Gallery on October 4 and run until January 3, 2016. Through play‐based learning, the exhibit will help kids explore notions of human dignity, respect and equality – concepts that serve as foundations for later human rights learning.

Children will enter a lively, colourful exhibit about feelings. They will play and have fun, act silly, consider what makes them sad, mad and happy, and be encouraged to think about love and forgiveness. The travelling exhibition – appropriate for even the youngest members of the family — was created by the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh with support from the Fetzer Institute.

A media preview of the new exhibition will be held on Friday, October 2 at 10:30 a.m.

XOXO: An Exhibit About Love and Forgiveness will be the second exhibition in the Museum's Level 1 Gallery, a 450‐square‐metre space completed in June 2015 with state‐of‐the‐art technology and climate controls that enable the museum to host exhibits of any size and type.

The first travelling exhibition in the gallery, "Magna Carta: Law, Liberty and Legacy", closed last Friday (September 18) after a five‐week run that welcomed 11,600 visitors to view one of the world's most famous historic charters, alongside some of Canada's most important foundational documents. The exhibition celebrated the 800th anniversary of the great charter that laid the foundation for basic principles of democracy and human rights.

"We began in the past and now move to the future, with a wonderful exhibition aimed at the next generation of human rights defenders," said CMHR president and CEO John Young.

"Development of human rights concepts are for all ages, including the youth. We know they resonate from our school programs and summer day camps. Our new exhibit will give families, daycares and children's groups another reason to visit Canada's new national museum. We hope it will prompt family conversations about how we treat and interact with each other."

An online game connected to the Magna Carta exhibition, developed by the CMHR, will continue to be available through the museum's Web site. The game, called "Making Meaning: Images and Perceptions" is intended to provoke thought and discussion about the way human rights history can be reinforced or distorted.

Magna Carta and its companion document, the Charter of the Forest, were on loan from Durham Cathedral in the United Kingdom in an exhibition tour organized by Magna Carta Canada, developed by Lord Cultural Resources. The exhibition makes its next stop in Toronto's Fort York National Historic Site, starting October 4. The CMHR had developed a unique companion exhibit for the Winnipeg leg of the tour, focused on Canada's own constitutional documents – on loan from Library and Archives Canada — and their connection to rights and freedoms.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is the first museum in the world solely dedicated to the evolution, celebration and future of human rights. Using multimedia technology and other innovative approaches, the CMHR creates inspiring encounters with human rights for all ages, in a visitor experience unlike any other.

Maureen Fitzhenry
CMHR media relations manager
204–289-2112
Cell: 204–782-8442
maureen.fitzhenry@humanrights.ca