Looks like they are thinking about reorganizing most of the China gallery at the 1912 wing and opening it up with a spiral staircase in the middle in the later phases.

AoD
 
3Dementia said:
This is brilliant.

And the limited free access is a baby step in the right direction. One of the things I love most about London (UK) is free access to most museums... I would often take a quick detour through the British Museum before heading to another destination. So uplifting :) .
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Northern Light said:
Agreed on both points.

When you look at the financials, nominally, ROM only needs to replace ~13M in admission fees (last fiscal year)

View attachment 540606

Source: https://www.rom.on.ca/sites/default...io-museum-03312023-financial-statement-en.pdf

In practice, they also have a loss to cover in the range of 5.4M (2023 is the second column from the right)

So they need about 18.4M in alternate revenues/reduced expenses.

I would argue that not selling admissions, reduced cash handling etc. would save at least $500,000 per year, probably more. So probably 18M'ish.

A 100M endowment should be able to spin-off (after reinvesting for inflation) 4% per annum, or about 4M, so if we could just get some Canadian family with 20B in assets to spare 5% of their fortune......

There would be no need for admission prices, and some budget to spare.

***

Alternatively, Ontario could just increase its grant allocation by 18M which would be less than 0.01% of Ontario's budget.
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The ROM could even adopt the Metropolitan Museum of Art's admission model, which is "pay as you can."
 
Personally, I think that--in an ideal universe--all of the anthropological/world civilization stuff would be exhibited separately in its own museum. A repurposed Old City Hall might be the ideal place, where it could be effectively partnered with the long gestating Toronto/Ontario history museum proposal.

That would leave the ROM as exclusively a natural history/science institution, with plenty of new room for expanded exhibits of that type. And the crystal would be replaced entirely, perhaps with a proper planetarium in that space, kinda similar to the Rose Center's arrangement within the American Museum of Natural History in NY.

I dunno, it's always felt a bit wonky and disorderly having Chinese pottery, Egyptian mummies and T-Rex's all cluttered together in the same space. (It's not how they do things in real world class cities, dagnammit!) Sure, all of that might cost a billion or so but one can dream....
 
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Toronto and East York Community Council - Meeting 11​

Meeting Date and Status:

February 21, 2024 - 9:30 AM

TE11.30 - Royal Ontario Museum - Revolving Doors and a Protective Canopy​

Consideration Type: ACTIONWard: 11 - University - Rosedale

Origin​

(February 8, 2024) Letter from Councillor Dianne Saxe

Recommendations​

It is recommended that:

1. Council request the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning to work with the Royal Ontario Museum to permit the Royal Ontario Museum, at 100 Queen’s Park Crescent, to install energy-saving revolving doors and a protective canopy over the entrance to protect patrons and passersby from ice and snow falling from the Crystal.

Summary​

I am writing to you today to request your support in permitting the Royal Ontario Museum to install energy-saving revolving doors and a canopy over the entrance to protect patrons and passersby from ice and snow falling from the Crystal. The current zoning bylaw, 340-2003, does not allow any protrusions from the existing building envelope.

Background Information​

(February 8, 2024) Letter from Councillor Dianne Saxe on Royal Ontario Museum - Revolving Doors and a Protective Canopy
https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2024/te/bgrd/backgroundfile-243179.pdf
 
Anyone walking by here want to shoot the Bloor Street frontage? The hoarding is supposed to have gone up as of the 20th!

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interchange42 said:
Anyone walking by here want to shoot the Bloor Street frontage? The hoarding is supposed to have gone up as of the 20th!

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I went for a walk this aft, camera in hand...........no hoarding here yet, as at 2:30pm. Photo of ROM looking 'as usual' will follow when I upload my camera.
 
As promised, my pic of nothing happening, at the ROM, lol; taken February 22nd, 2024:

DSC03140.jpg


Since that seems under-contented for an NL post.............

I looked up the building permits.

We're not quite there yet, but very close.

This one looks like it just requires ROM's cheque to clear:

1708688773220.png


However, this one seems to need some work:

1708688814529.png



Plumbing and Mechanical are also 'Issuance Pending'
 
DSC said:

Toronto and East York Community Council - Meeting 11​

Meeting Date and Status:

February 21, 2024 - 9:30 AM

TE11.30 - Royal Ontario Museum - Revolving Doors and a Protective Canopy​

Consideration Type: ACTIONWard: 11 - University - Rosedale

Origin​

(February 8, 2024) Letter from Councillor Dianne Saxe

Recommendations​

It is recommended that:

1. Council request the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning to work with the Royal Ontario Museum to permit the Royal Ontario Museum, at 100 Queen’s Park Crescent, to install energy-saving revolving doors and a protective canopy over the entrance to protect patrons and passersby from ice and snow falling from the Crystal.

Summary​

I am writing to you today to request your support in permitting the Royal Ontario Museum to install energy-saving revolving doors and a canopy over the entrance to protect patrons and passersby from ice and snow falling from the Crystal. The current zoning bylaw, 340-2003, does not allow any protrusions from the existing building envelope.

Background Information​

(February 8, 2024) Letter from Councillor Dianne Saxe on Royal Ontario Museum - Revolving Doors and a Protective Canopy
https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2024/te/bgrd/backgroundfile-243179.pdf
Click to expand...
The whole thing needs more than building permits. As reported by @DSC above, it also needs a ZBA. That letter of Councillor Saxe's expressing support for the rezoning to allow the new canopy and revolving doors that @DSC linked to above was adopted by Toronto East York Community Council on Wednesday, meaning it now goes to City Council with a recommendation for approval on March 20, 2024.

I doubt the hoarding would have to wait for the last of the two permits, and it won't need the zoning to have been approved already, and beyond that, they can always close the Bloor Street doors and direct people to Queens Park to enter as soon as they want, so I'm also curious as to whether that has happened already...

...so if anyone sees that the Bloor doors have closed before the hoarding goes up, that would be another tidbit I'd appreciate learning.

Thanks!!

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Early evening, yesterday:

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interchange42 said:
Early evening, yesterday:

View attachment 547524View attachment 547525View attachment 547526View attachment 547527View attachment 547528View attachment 547529View attachment 547531View attachment 547530

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I renewed my 2 year non-resident membership today. I watched the Liebeskind iteration when under construction, and while interested in the complexity of construction, nevertheless was dubious about the functionality of the inner spaces. There were a lot of places for dust bunnies to hang out. It's taken a while, but the newest iteration looks to fix some of the obvious shortcomings. I look forward to the new.
 
We have just put up a pair of new stories about the OpenROM renovations on our front page. One focuses on the details of the changes, while the other focuses on Siamak Hariri's vision for the work.

A bonus here that's not in either story is this photo I got of the outline on the floor of the dinosaur galleries as to where the oculus referred to in the stories will be cut:

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