Six Star Magazine Six Star Magazine Winter 2008/2009 | Page 27

FEATURE

A GEM TO DISCOVER
The magnificence and wonderment of the Royal Ontario Museum can
now be felt before the front door with the creation of the spectacular
Michael Lee-Chin Crystal addition. This bold and unique structure,
adjacent to the current ROM buildings, is the centrepiece of the
Museum’s Renaissance ROM, an ambitious $270-million expansion
and renovation project.
The ROM, located in downtown Toronto, is the fifth largest
museum in North America and the largest museum in Canada. Now,
with the addition of the ‘Crystal’, the ROM is also one of the most
talked about and controversial.
Specimens from the Museum’s gem and mineral collection
inspired the initial concept for the Crystal. Intended to be a distinctive
new symbol of Toronto for the 21st cen tury, the Crystal is composed
of five interlocking, self-supporting prismatic structures that co-exist
but are only attached to the original ROM building by the bridges
that link them. When it opened in 2007, public opinion was decidedly
divided; some downright hated it, while others applauded its unique
qualities. In the end, this spectacular glass and aluminum design
has achieved what some believe was its intent all along – to increase
traffic into the museum.
Even without the lure of this fabulous piece of architecture, there
are many, many great reasons to visit the ROM. With more than six
million items and over 40 galleries, the ROM is considered a major
museum for world culture and natural history. The jaw-dropping
dinosaur display includes some of the ROM’s largest natural history
specimens, including 25 fully mounted dinosaur skeletons from the
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high Barosaurus skeleton, the largest dinosaur ever to be permanently
displayed in Canada.
As well as trekking through the dinosaur galleries, brave families
have long loved the Bat Cave, fashioned after the St. Clair Cave in
Jamaica and home to bats, spiders, snakes and other creepy creatures
of the night! Taking a page from the old Hitchcock film, The Birds, the
Gallery of Birds displays hundreds of species of birds in flight as well
as eggs, feathers, footprints and nests.
If you like your natural history sparkly, Teck Suite of Galleries: Earth’s
Treasures, which opens this December, will showcase some of the finest
collections of exceptional specimens of minerals, gems, rocks and
meteorites in North America.
Royal Ontario Museum (ROM)
100 Queen’s Park, Toronto, ON
www.rom.on.ca

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