Curator Dennis Oomen

May 10, 2011

Dennis Oomen (pronounced O-men) has been the curator at the Kamloops Museum and Archives since December of 2006. His museum career began with contract work for the Federal Museum of Civilization in Hull, Quebec in 1988. The new museum was still months away from opening and there was a lot of work to be done building new exhibits. Shortly after more work followed, this time at the Museum of Nature, and the National Aviation Museum.

Dennis admits that not all of it was as exciting as his first tenure with the Museum of Civilization. "There was the time I had to do an inventory of the propeller collection at the Aviation Museum, I had to learn to drive a forklift just to lift the propellers off their cradles to look them over."

"It worked out though, because I was back at the Museum of Civilization soon after that."

In 1991 Dennis accepted a position at Calgary's Glenbow Museum as a curatorial assistant. "I wanted to get into the curatorial end of museum work to put my history degree to use. At the Glenbow I worked with the arms and armour collection and produced a new show. The end result was a permanent exhibit called "Warriors" which is still in place today".

After a brief stint working as a buyer for the University of Calgary, Dennis returned to the museum world as the Kelowna Museums exhibit curator. Dennis feels lucky in that he has had training and exposure to hands on exhibit design and fabrication along with the traditional curatorial skills of research and writing.

"In Britain a curator is also called a "keeper". When you work with historical collections, they have to be cared for and documented, and you have to improve your collection by carefully collecting material relevant to your community and your museum's mandate".

The Kamloops Museum has a great community collection with highlights like the Sid and Rhone Baker Mineral collection, a pair of pistols associated with Bill Miner and there is also a fine collection of First People's artifacts as well. The British Columbia Fly Fishing Gallery has been completed, one of the first of the new exhibits being planned for the third floor.

Over the years Dennis has worked on many subjects ranging from 16th century Basque whalers to modern day Tattoo culture.

"You learn a bit from each one, and you add it to your repertoire of skills... I'll be using all of them here in Kamloops".