The Polygon Gallery is a small contemporary photography museum on the Shipyards waterfront, opened in 2017 in a striking corrugated-aluminium-clad cantilevered building by Patkau Architects. The collection focuses on lens-based contemporary art — photography, video, installations — by Canadian and international artists, with three to four major exhibitions a year and a strong programme of monthly talks, films, and tours.
The architecture alone is worth the visit: the building rests on stilts that lift it above the public plaza, the upper galleries cantilever 12 metres out toward the harbour, and the western façade is a wall of full-height windows looking across the water at downtown Vancouver. Light flooding into the galleries from the south makes display difficult and curatorially interesting.
Admission is "pay what you can" with a suggested C$10 donation. Open Wednesday to Sunday; closed Mondays and Tuesdays. The combination with the surrounding Shipyards bars and the SeaBus ride from downtown makes this one of the easier museum visits to combine with a half-day in the area.