yyzer
Senior Member
It's an ocean liner – no, it's a message
The Crystal opening launches a massive street party and mixed reviews
VAL ROSS
From Monday's Globe and Mail
June 4, 2007 at 4:05 AM EDT
The prow of an icebreaker. The iceberg it smashed. An alien warship. Whatever the $135-million Michael Lee-Chin Crystal addition to the Royal Ontario Museum reminds you of, it officially landed on Toronto's Bloor Street Saturday night, jutting into a street party for thousands of people, a light show, a noisy concert of rap artists, Celtic fiddlers, an aboriginal women's rock ensemble and fireworks.
Now Toronto must accept that the Crystal is not just a shape, it's a message. Named for a Chinese Jamaican immigrant (lead donor Michael Lee-Chin), bankrolled in part by immigrant entrepreneurs from Asia and Europe, and officially welcomed by a francophone Haitian (Governor-General Michaelle Jean), it is an elbow into Toronto's self-image, insisting on acknowledgment of change.
Torontonians are ready. The crowds on Bloor Street, people in halter tops and hijabs, on canes and pushing strollers, applauded approvingly when Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty pronounced the Crystal "refreshingly bold" and Heritage Minister Bev Oda described it as "a true celebration of possibilities ... a sign that this is a great international city."
But they saved their roars for the anti-politicians, such as scientist David Suzuki, who quoted Al Gore and declared that the great museum could educate the young to save the planet.
And they stamped and cheered for Lee-Chin himself, who said, "Thank you very much, my mother, my father, my fellow Torontonians ... You don't choose the colour of your skin. You choose your future. Isn't it wonderful we live in a country where choices abound?"
The Lee-Chin story is so perfect a story line, it could have been scripted: How a boy who once caddied for billionaire Galen Weston on a Jamaican golf course came to Canada in 1970 to study civil engineering, worked in the mutual fund industry, acquired the Ontario-based investment firm AIC Ltd; how its assets grew to $9-billion; how in 2003 Hilary Weston, wife of Galen and chair of the ROM's fundraising arm, convinced Lee-Chin to help fund the ROM by reminding him of what an example his story would be to other immigrants.
Especially for Jamaicans: That country's Prime Minister, Portia Simpson-Miller, sent her congratulations to be read at the Saturday night opening.
What is there left to say about the Crystal itself? As a feat of sheer engineering innovation, it's something for Canada to be proud of. So is the effort we the people put into funding the thing ($262-million raised so far, but the full price of ROM reconstruction is now $270-million including financing, and could rise as high as $300-million before everything is complete). The building is now radically reoriented from its original address, the calm and institutional Queen's Park, and is anchored on commercial Bloor Street. A lot of the new ROM interior is devoted to retail and dining, a declaration that this museum is no longer only about scholarship but packaging, profit-making and pleasuring consumers.
On Saturday night, when the blue June twilight faded into indigo, lights of purple, green and pink began to play across the vast planes of its mighty face, and Toronto learned that the Crystal was also a thing of beauty. Yet public opinion is still divided on our new architectural icon.
"It might be appropriate on a free-standing site, such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, but it has no business pissing on the venerable old ROM building," declared Don Kerr, an architect from the Turks and Caicos Islands. "Manners! Wherefore art thou?"
Susan Mall of San Francisco disagreed. "I think it's absolutely fantastic. It's truly going to be a mecca for people coming to Toronto."
Mall was sitting on bleachers erected on the blocked-to-traffic Bloor Street with a group from the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco, who had come to see this latest work by architect Daniel Libeskind. Her museum is using Libeskind on its own current $47-million building project. The museum's director, Connie Wolf, said, "San Francisco is a very conservative town. But for Daniel there's no such thing as neutral space."
Hiroshi Sugimoto, the first artist-curator to use one of the Crystal's angular spaces, complained about that very issue to Libeskind himself in a playful but challenging panel discussion on Thursday night. The occasion was the opening of Sugimoto's show, History of History, in the Crystal's fourth-floor gallery, the Institute for Contemporary Culture.
Said Sugimoto: "This is Daniel Libeskind's Crystal. I was having a hard time understanding this plan. I was scared."
In that he had much in common with the ROM's contractors and engineers, who over the four years of construction fell 18 months behind the original schedule in order to make all the necessary structural adaptations; indeed, on Thursday night at the opening of History of History, smells of glue and drywall dust hung in the air, and the noise of drilling continued amid the chatter of gallery-goers.
"I first heard of Daniel Libeskind at the Venice Biennale in 1985, when you were known as an 'unbuilt architect,' " Sugimoto added playfully. "I wish you had kept to that." Libeskind grinned: "Many artists wish that! Many people would prefer to live in a banal environment, and just look at images of beautiful architecture."
There's no doubt that Libeskind's sloping walls and diagonal lines present difficult interiors for exhibition designers to deal with. But the dazzling Sugimoto show, incorporating fossils, photographs and ancient Japanese artifacts, proves that Libeskind's spaces can work beautifully for three-dimensional objects; far better, in fact, than for the display of flat art, as designers at Libeskind's new Denver Art Gallery are discovering.
"I've seen Denver and Daniel's other buildings," said architect Bruce Kuwabara after a visit to the ROM's fourth floor gallery. "I think this, the Crystal, is his best."
The Crystal opening launches a massive street party and mixed reviews
VAL ROSS
From Monday's Globe and Mail
June 4, 2007 at 4:05 AM EDT
The prow of an icebreaker. The iceberg it smashed. An alien warship. Whatever the $135-million Michael Lee-Chin Crystal addition to the Royal Ontario Museum reminds you of, it officially landed on Toronto's Bloor Street Saturday night, jutting into a street party for thousands of people, a light show, a noisy concert of rap artists, Celtic fiddlers, an aboriginal women's rock ensemble and fireworks.
Now Toronto must accept that the Crystal is not just a shape, it's a message. Named for a Chinese Jamaican immigrant (lead donor Michael Lee-Chin), bankrolled in part by immigrant entrepreneurs from Asia and Europe, and officially welcomed by a francophone Haitian (Governor-General Michaelle Jean), it is an elbow into Toronto's self-image, insisting on acknowledgment of change.
Torontonians are ready. The crowds on Bloor Street, people in halter tops and hijabs, on canes and pushing strollers, applauded approvingly when Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty pronounced the Crystal "refreshingly bold" and Heritage Minister Bev Oda described it as "a true celebration of possibilities ... a sign that this is a great international city."
But they saved their roars for the anti-politicians, such as scientist David Suzuki, who quoted Al Gore and declared that the great museum could educate the young to save the planet.
And they stamped and cheered for Lee-Chin himself, who said, "Thank you very much, my mother, my father, my fellow Torontonians ... You don't choose the colour of your skin. You choose your future. Isn't it wonderful we live in a country where choices abound?"
The Lee-Chin story is so perfect a story line, it could have been scripted: How a boy who once caddied for billionaire Galen Weston on a Jamaican golf course came to Canada in 1970 to study civil engineering, worked in the mutual fund industry, acquired the Ontario-based investment firm AIC Ltd; how its assets grew to $9-billion; how in 2003 Hilary Weston, wife of Galen and chair of the ROM's fundraising arm, convinced Lee-Chin to help fund the ROM by reminding him of what an example his story would be to other immigrants.
Especially for Jamaicans: That country's Prime Minister, Portia Simpson-Miller, sent her congratulations to be read at the Saturday night opening.
What is there left to say about the Crystal itself? As a feat of sheer engineering innovation, it's something for Canada to be proud of. So is the effort we the people put into funding the thing ($262-million raised so far, but the full price of ROM reconstruction is now $270-million including financing, and could rise as high as $300-million before everything is complete). The building is now radically reoriented from its original address, the calm and institutional Queen's Park, and is anchored on commercial Bloor Street. A lot of the new ROM interior is devoted to retail and dining, a declaration that this museum is no longer only about scholarship but packaging, profit-making and pleasuring consumers.
On Saturday night, when the blue June twilight faded into indigo, lights of purple, green and pink began to play across the vast planes of its mighty face, and Toronto learned that the Crystal was also a thing of beauty. Yet public opinion is still divided on our new architectural icon.
"It might be appropriate on a free-standing site, such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, but it has no business pissing on the venerable old ROM building," declared Don Kerr, an architect from the Turks and Caicos Islands. "Manners! Wherefore art thou?"
Susan Mall of San Francisco disagreed. "I think it's absolutely fantastic. It's truly going to be a mecca for people coming to Toronto."
Mall was sitting on bleachers erected on the blocked-to-traffic Bloor Street with a group from the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco, who had come to see this latest work by architect Daniel Libeskind. Her museum is using Libeskind on its own current $47-million building project. The museum's director, Connie Wolf, said, "San Francisco is a very conservative town. But for Daniel there's no such thing as neutral space."
Hiroshi Sugimoto, the first artist-curator to use one of the Crystal's angular spaces, complained about that very issue to Libeskind himself in a playful but challenging panel discussion on Thursday night. The occasion was the opening of Sugimoto's show, History of History, in the Crystal's fourth-floor gallery, the Institute for Contemporary Culture.
Said Sugimoto: "This is Daniel Libeskind's Crystal. I was having a hard time understanding this plan. I was scared."
In that he had much in common with the ROM's contractors and engineers, who over the four years of construction fell 18 months behind the original schedule in order to make all the necessary structural adaptations; indeed, on Thursday night at the opening of History of History, smells of glue and drywall dust hung in the air, and the noise of drilling continued amid the chatter of gallery-goers.
"I first heard of Daniel Libeskind at the Venice Biennale in 1985, when you were known as an 'unbuilt architect,' " Sugimoto added playfully. "I wish you had kept to that." Libeskind grinned: "Many artists wish that! Many people would prefer to live in a banal environment, and just look at images of beautiful architecture."
There's no doubt that Libeskind's sloping walls and diagonal lines present difficult interiors for exhibition designers to deal with. But the dazzling Sugimoto show, incorporating fossils, photographs and ancient Japanese artifacts, proves that Libeskind's spaces can work beautifully for three-dimensional objects; far better, in fact, than for the display of flat art, as designers at Libeskind's new Denver Art Gallery are discovering.
"I've seen Denver and Daniel's other buildings," said architect Bruce Kuwabara after a visit to the ROM's fourth floor gallery. "I think this, the Crystal, is his best."
