Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies

The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies is named after Banff artist Peter Whyte who met his wife, Catharine Robb, at the Boston Museum School of Fine Art in 1925 before both settling in Banff. They combined their resources to create this gem of a museum. The land came from the Whyte family and the money from the Robb family. The museum was opened in 1968 and reflects Whyte’s interest in culture and the artistic community. Today the museum collects, preserves, studies, exhibits and interprets cultural resources from the Canadian Rockies and around the world.The oldest paintings in the Bow Valley are pictographs painted on rocks east of here. When the transcontinental railway was built, the Canadian Pacific Railway needed a means of enticing tourists to visit the Rocky Mountains and stay in its hotels. It gave free passage to select painters and photographers to produce high quality images for its travel brochures.