I had a look at the Peruvian exhibition yesterday - beautiful gold crowns, earrings, headdresses, masks, and ornaments and a short film explaining when and how the collection was discovered and excavated. Well worth a visit.
I see that a Shang dynasty bronze wine vessel, from the collection of the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, sold at Sotheby's yesterday for $8.1 million ( U.S. ). A beautiful and rare object indeed, but thank goodness the ROM vacuumed up their magnificent collection of similar rarities in China in the 1920's ... at a fraction of the price.
pic from flickr showing cladding being installed....one massive jigsaw puzzle! Cladding looks a bit dirty...imagine it will be cleaned up and polished after install is complete..
Once installed, the grey protective covering for each panel is removed to reveal ... an almost identical grey underneath!
Grey ( sigh ), such a beautiful neutral. It worked so well on the opera house.
Starting in May, ROM members will receive one comprehensive magazine ( ROM Magazine ) rather than the two ( Rotunda and ROM Members' News ) that we get now. The inaugural edition will highlight the Crystal with several feature articles. Copies will also be included for delivery to Globe and Mail subscribers.
The cladding is not looking like the sample showed in the newsletter the ROM released a couple of years ago. The sample looked like brushed metal while what is being installed looks like a matte plastic.
I would say that this is one of the most crucial stages of developing the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal....the wrong cladding can ruin the whole thing.
I predict that the cladding still has protective covering on it and will only be removed after they have finished installing it (at very least section by section).
The cladding is quite nice actually. You should go walk along the sidewalk along there and there are skids of cladding sitting there. last time i was there cladding was right next to the fence so you could touch it. It does look really grey and matte in the sun but when its raining or cloudy it really takes on a different look. The finish is of very high quality. It should also tarnish a bit over time. Also it is very reflective which could look amazing when its all completed.