Going Places: ROM celebrating everything Canadian

BY VICKI GILHULA

Tomorrow the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto will open its doors for its first exhibition in the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal.

People got a look at the new addition in June, but A Season of Canada is the first exhibition in the spectacular "crystal" designed by Daniel Libeskind.

The intricate structure, which has 52 windows, is rumoured to have been first designed on a table napkin. It features 3,500 tons of steel, 3,000 steel pieces, 38 tons of bolts, and 9,000 cubic metres of concrete.

People will like it or hate it, but the building makes a statement on Bloor St., and its mind-boggling design will shake up the image of museums. The "crystal" is part of ROM's massive $270 million "Renaissance" to appropriately show its six million objects. It is the country's largest museum of world history and natural history.

Toronto is earning a reputation around the world for its  early 21st century architecture by leading contemporary creative minds. These include the nine-storey "table on stilts" Sharpe Centre for Design at the Ontario College of Art which opened in 2004. Last spring Diamond and Schmitt's 2,000-seat Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts opened. A few weeks later the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, revamped by Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg, was hailed as "vital, elegant and magical" by Toronto Star architect critic Christopher Hume. And work continues on Frank Gehry's transformation of the Art Gallery of Ontario.

ROM curator William Thorsell says it is important that museums are not seen as stuffy rooms filled with dead things. That's why the new Institute of Contemporary Art on the fourth floor will feature contemporary exhibits which complement the ROM's collection. There will also be  spaces for video projections.

The addition will allow ROM to "liberate" its collections, says Thorsell.

He describes the ultra modern addition which connects with the heritage limestone building as "dialogue between the old and new building."

The entrance to ROM has been moved from the Queen's Park side to the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal on Bloor. (Michael Lee-Chin, chair of Portland Holdings, is a billionaire mutual fund dealer who donated $30 million to the project.)

The gallery which will house the dinosaurs opens in December, and other galleries will open in the spring.

The Canada Collects exhibition, in the new Garfield Weston Exhibition Hall, features treasures which have been collected from Canadian museums from coast to coast. Highlights include Pierre Elliott Trudeau's birch bark canoe, the original manuscript of Anne of Green Gables, and landing gear from the Avro Arrow.

As part of A Season of Canada, the Institute for Contemporary Art on the four floor of the new addition, will feature the work of eight contemporary aboriginal artists.

These works include Cetology, a skeleton of a bow whale made from lawn chairs, by Vancouver artist Brian Jungen.

An exhibition of 560 artifacts which tell the history of Canada will be on display in the heritage building. Another exhibit looks at the history of Canada's first people. This exhibit includes more than 40 Paul Kane paintings.

A Season of Canada continues at the Royal Ontario Museum until Jan. 6.