Nelson's combined art gallery and history museum occupies a handsome Carnegie-era building in the downtown core. The history galleries cover the Ktunaxa people who inhabited the region long before European settlement, the silver-mining boom of the 1890s that built the town, and the counterculture wave that arrived in the 1960s and 1970s — particularly the American Vietnam War draft resisters who settled in the Kootenays and had a lasting effect on the character of the region. The rotating art exhibitions showcase BC artists.
Small but well-curated, and worth an hour on a rainy afternoon or as an introduction to the area's history.