Interactive exhibits (plus dark, cul-de-sac gallery arrangements) itself is a leftover trend from the 60s-early 90s period, so if anything, it was the very thing that killed the ROM's "soul".
Click to expand...

It may have been a trend, but it's one worth retaining in some form. The current trend of turning museums into galleries of artifacts may be satisfying for a few people who are already very familiar with the subjects, but it's very damaging to the museum's educational mandate.
 
Though the eloquence of beautiful objects, and the sense of wonder they create, and the thirst for more knowledge they engender, is not to be discounted.
 
I think that when original artifacts aren't available, other means of telling the story can sometimes work.

For instance, in 1905 C.T. Currelly made casts of wall sculptures depicting the trade voyage to Punt from the tomb of Egyptian pharoah Queen Hatshepsut. They're on display, with a recorded commentary that you can sit and listen to, in the Egyptian galleries. The casts are rarities in themselves.

Other original items in the Egyptian galleries, such as the small stone relief fragments from the reign of heretic pharoah Akhenatun, are at first and perhaps second glance less impressive than the casts, but are quite rare since much of the art from that period was deliberately destroyed after Akhenatun's death. Also, the art produced during his brief reign is quite different from what went before. It surely deserves to be shown.

The point is, the viewer can see directly what the stuff looks like and the more they learn the more they may appreciate the significance of it all.
 
Nice webcam shot of ROM with a pinkish/champagne tinge from the setting sun.

SunsetROM.jpg


AoD
 
ROM Reviving Plans for Another Condo

ROM floats another condo plan
VAL ROSS

From Thursday's Globe and Mail

May 3, 2007 at 4:37 AM EDT

TORONTO — Bruised but unbowed by its previous defeat, the Royal Ontario Museum is reviving plans for a big residential development at the museum's south end to help fund its $250-million reconstruction.

On May 17, two developers will present members of the ROM's board with proposals for a building on the 9,000-square-foot plot now occupied by the shuttered McLaughlin Planetarium (the plaza in front must stay as clear space). The building is expected to combine lecture space for the University of Toronto, possibly storage space for the museum, and much-needed revenue-producing residential units.

"We haven't had formal discussions with the museum about this," Vivek Goel, provost of the University of Toronto, said yesterday. "But we do understand that external developers will be proposing something."

Word of the planetarium-site plans was dropped casually by museum CEO William Thorsell at his museum's public-relations overture in New York City on Tuesday, where he and a ROM team were hosting a media breakfast to raise the American profile of the ROM's new Michael Lee-Chin Crystal.

The Crystal will open -- or more accurately, open the doors on its mostly completed construction -- on June 1. But the federal government has still not given the ROM an anticipated $12-million in top-up funding. With the cost of bridge financing and more fundraising estimated to be an additional $20-million, the ROM is still short about $50-million. Hence the urgent need for revenue-generating development.

The ROM's last residential development scheme, by Graywood Developments, was proposed in 2005: a sleek, 46-storey tower that would have given the ROM five floors of office and storage space topped by 37 stories of luxury condos, which would have netted the museum about $20-million.

But local businesses, ratepayer groups and institutions protested that the condo's "needle" tower would destroy their neighbourhood, and overshadow the campus's Philosopher's Walk. Meanwhile, the U of T administration felt that the campus precincts should not be rezoned from institutional to residential use, especially for the benefit of high-rollers. There were traffic issues, too: The university music and law faculties, which offer car access off Queen's Park just south of the Planetarium, feared that too many condo residents driving in and out would create unacceptable congestion.

Above all, everyone was mad that the ROM hadn't kept them more informed.

At Tuesday's mid-Manhattan breakfast, Mr. Thorsell admitted that the ROM's problem last time was that the neighbours felt that the condo plan had been imposed. This time, he vowed that the museum would work more closely with the community.

As of yesterday, senior staff at the two colleges closest to the ROM, Trinity and Victoria, were unaware of any new residential projects coming to a campus near them.

But the U of T can't afford to be anti-development: It has its own rezoning and densification schemes to create more space for its law and music faculties -- which border on the ROM. U of T provost Mr. Goel commented, "I welcome Bill saying they will work more closely with us."

As for the other neighbours, the ROM's plans are sure to be on the agenda on May 9, when the Annex Residents Association, business and institutions are scheduled to meet with city officials to discuss the latest planning vision for the Bloor Street corridor.

With a report from Simon Houpt in New York
 
They may be talking to their neighbours now, but the City is still adamant that they don't want residential projects on Queen's Park.
 
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It's okay to think it's ugly


No one says you have to love the ROM addition

by Joey Slinger
May 3, 2007

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/210011


The Royal Ontario Museum addition is far enough along that you get a pretty good idea what it's going to look like when it's finished, and if you don't absolutely love it, that's all right. There's no law that says you have to love it.

It's even all right if you find you don't really love it very much. Or don't love it even slightly.

Nobody can force you to love it the tiniest little bit.

You don't even have to like it.

Whether you don't like it, or don't like it so much that the sight of it makes you ill, that's okay. What you think is your business.

If you've never seen anything that looked as ridiculous in your life, it could be that you haven't lived much or seen many ridiculous things, but you're entitled to your opinion every bit as much as somebody who's lived a lot and seen thousands of ridiculous things but has never seen one as ridiculous as this.

If it gives you the creeps. If it gives you hives all over your body. If it causes a rash to break out on your eyeballs. If it makes your guts itch.

Don't worry.

They can't strip you naked and tie you spread-eagled on top of an ant hill and slather you with honey to make you change your mind.

Say you think it looks like some kind of intergalactic parasite from a science-fiction movie (two-reeler, probably 1954) that has glommed on to the museum where the white-haired old curator Dr. Tomlinson has been secretly extracting material from mummies that will permit him to create an entire race of mummies that will rule the world.

And the intergalactic parasite is sucking the vital juices out of the museum and Dr. Tomlinson because they stand between it and Dr. Tomlinson's lusciously heavy-breasted, blond daughter and laboratory assistant, Tamara, whose vital juices it needs to create an entire race of intergalactic parasites that will rule the universe.

That's okay.

Go ahead.

Nobody can stop you.

They can't punish you because they call it "the Crystal'' and you expected something crystalline and gleaming, which shows that you know next to nothing about how the molecular structure of crystals can make some of them look about as shiny as dirt.

Nobody can punish you because you don't know science, or because you don't know architecture, or you don't know art, or you don't know dick.

It's as simple as that.

And if you don't know art, but know what you like, and you still don't like it, or if you do know art, and think it looks like a pile of cubist dog doodle – something Braque, if he'd been a responsible citizen, would have stooped and scooped – okay.

You're entitled.

What if you think it's ugly as sin?

And what if you're asked to name the ugliest sin you can think of? (Take your time. The renovated ROM isn't going to all of a sudden vanish.) And then you're asked to compare how ugly you think it is with the ugliest sin you could think of.

And you say, well, maybe it's not that ugly, but you'd still hate to have a sin this ugly on your conscience.

That's great. It's your conscience.

If you got the idea that the "Bilbao effect'' referred to creating a museum that draws tourists from everywhere on the planet, thus rescuing a backwater from decrepitude – if you got an idea like that while the ROM uses it to mean attracting school trips from Burlington, they can't capture you at gunpoint and turn you over to the authorities in Afghanistan.

You can't be tortured.

Because if you are, the prime minister will find out about it and – and, on second thought, maybe you should keep your ideas about what the "Bilbao effect'' means under your hat.

It doesn't mean you're wrong.

It just means a little discretion doesn't hurt, the same as if the sight of the addition makes you ill, it doesn't hurt to step discreetly behind a tree to throw up.

If you're gradually coming to understand that the reason everybody else in the country hates Toronto isn't because we're so damn wonderful, and they're jealous, but because they're mortally embarrassed that the premier city in Canada never misses a chance to show that it's pure, unvarnished Hicksville, and you're kind of embarrassed about it too, fine.

There's no law that says you can't feel embarrassed.
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^^...and some of the people who spoke against a condo on the ROM site last time will be only so happy to speak up again. There is just about no plan that would include residential on this property that I can foresee that would sway me- this is the wrong place for residential.

We'll see how this shapes up...

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I wonder if Libeskind has been corralled into designing it this time? He's on a bit of a roll, what with the Crystal and that monstrous tongue thing behind the Hummingbird Centre 'n all ...
 
I wish they would 'give' the waterfront to Daniel Libeskind, and see what he comes up with......
 
it's awfully close to the hyatt and four seasons, and that is pretty tall...i think itàs justified, and the city is being unreasonable.
 
Providing the design is strong and attractive I have no issues with building at the R.O.M. As the city grows bigger and denser we're going to have to realize that tall buildings will start to sprout up in places once unheard of. And I know of at least a few members on here that would agree this site being only a block south of Bloor will hardly be out of place. I'm not sure what the big deal is with creating new skylines or why we need to protect virgin sightlines here in Canada's biggest city. If I wanted to see big open sky's void of tall buildings I wouldn't be living here.
 
Looks like it will turn out pretty close to the rendering after all.

It's a good project, and it's good for the city. I like it, even if it isn't perfect.
 
This city has precious little public-realm space in its centre, and the ROM has no business splintering up bits of what there is by selling off some of it to the rich. Conversely, we have no shortage of parking lots and other far more appropriate redevelopment sites upon which to locate a condo.

South of Bloor and down to College between Queens Park and Huron should remain the terrain of the U of T and a couple of other hallowed institutions like the ROM. Some areas deserve to be special and should remain set aside for rare purposes.

There is simply no good reason for a condo on the site of the ROM other than to scrounge a little money for its current expansion. The south side should be left until such time as another expansion to the public galleries and/or curatorial offices and/or U of T Faculty of Music facilities is envisioned. Not a cubic centimetre of this area should be removed from institutional use.

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