Along the shores of the Red River in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is a tower of curving glass, steel, and alabaster, a bright place even in the dead of winter. In a gallery on the first floor, conservator Stephanie Chipilski checks equipment that monitors the room’s temperature and humidity. She slips on a pair of gloves and approaches a curving 40-foot wall of cedar that displays hundreds of items, many mounted on wooden blocks. The fleece-lined leather tongue of a worn hockey skate has slipped out…
