Royal Ontario Museum

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is a big museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. People can see art, learn about different cultures, and discover amazing things from nature there. It is one of the largest museums in North America and the biggest in Canada. The museum’s huge building covers 74,000 square metres (800,000 square feet) and is located north of Queen's Park, in the University district, with its main entrance on Bloor Street West. There is even a subway station called Museum subway station nearby that looks like the museum itself.

The ROM was established on April 16, 1912, and opened its doors to the public on March 19, 1914. It has always worked closely with the University of Toronto. With more than 18 million objects and 40 galleries, the ROM has an incredible variety of things to see. Visitors can explore dinosaur skeletons, beautiful minerals, and meteorites from space. There are also important historical items from Canada and Europe, as well as art from Africa, the Near East, and East Asia. The museum is home to the world’s largest collection of fossils from the Burgess Shale in British Columbia. It also has a fantastic collection of design and fine art, including stylish clothing, beautiful interiors, and unique products, especially from the Art Deco period.

History

The Royal Ontario Museum started on April 16, 1912. It was run by the Government of Ontario and the University of Toronto. Its first items came from the university and the Ontario Department of Education. On March 19, 1914, the Duke of Connaught, the governor general of Canada, opened the museum to the public.

The museum’s original building was built near the University of Toronto. It had five areas for different kinds of items. A big expansion opened in 1933, adding a new east wing.

In 1947, the museum became part of the University of Toronto. In 1968, it became its own entity again, along with the McLaughlin Planetarium. The planetarium closed in 1995.

In 2002, the museum began a project called Renaissance ROM. This included building a new structure called the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, designed by architect Daniel Libeskind. The first part of this project opened in 2005, and the Crystal opened in 2007.

The museum is still being updated today.

Buildings and architecture

The Royal Ontario Museum has several important buildings. The first building opened in 1914, and an eastern wing was added in 1933. In 1984, a curatorial centre was finished, and in 2007, a new part called the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal opened.

The original building and the eastern wing were designed by different architects and have different styles. The original building mixes Italianate and Neo-Romanesque styles, with rounded windows and decorations. The eastern wing, opened in 1933, includes an art deco rotunda and a new main entrance. It combines neo-Byzantine style with elements of Gothic Revival, such as carvings and statues.

The curatorial centre, finished in 1984, is a modern building made of concrete and glass. It has offices and storage for items not on display.

The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, opened in 2007, is a special addition designed by Daniel Libeskind. Its unique shape and materials make it an important part of the museum's architecture. The Crystal has a large atrium, galleries, and spaces for temporary exhibitions.

Galleries

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) started with five main galleries for archaeology, geology, mineralogy, palaeontology, and zoology. These displays were simple and hadn’t changed much for a long time. For example, an insect exhibit from the 1970s showed specimens from around the world in glass cases, with only the species name and location listed.

By the 1960s, the museum began adding more engaging displays. The original dinosaur gallery, created in the mid-1960s, featured dinosaur fossils posed dramatically against painted backgrounds and landscape models. Exhibits also explained topics like the extinction of the woolly mammoth. This trend of more dynamic displays continued, reaching a peak in the 1980s with “The Bat Cave,” where sound effects and lights made visitors feel like they were walking through a bat-filled cave.

Today, the ROM’s galleries fall into two main categories: Natural History Galleries and World Culture Galleries.

The Samuel Hall Currelly Gallery, located on Level 1, connects the east and west wings of the museum and serves as the main lobby past the admission area. It isn’t focused on one subject but showcases a variety of items from the museum’s collection.

Costumes and textiles

The Patricia Harris Gallery of Costumes and Textiles displays about 200 artifacts from the ROM’s textile and costume collections, dating from the 1st century BC to today. These pieces are rotated often because of their delicate nature. Textiles and fashion have helped define identities and offer clues about a culture’s customs and economy. This gallery highlights changes in textile design and cultural importance over time.

Interactive

The CIBC Discovery Gallery, designed as a children’s learning zone, closed in 2023. It had three main areas where children could touch artifacts, try on period costumes, dig for dinosaur bones, and examine fossils and meteorites. There was also a special area just for preschoolers.

The Patrick and Barbara Keenan Family Gallery of Hands-On Biodiversity lets visitors of all ages explore the relationships between living things in a fun, interactive space. Touchable specimens and interactive displays help visitors discover the natural world. Items like mossy frogs, a touchable shark jaw, snakeskin, and a replica fox’s den connect young visitors to the diversity of plants and animals.

Institute for Contemporary Culture

The Roloff Beny Gallery of the Institute for Contemporary Culture (ICC) showcases the ROM’s contemporary art exhibitions. This large gallery typically features exhibits that connect contemporary culture and events with the museum’s natural and world collections. Past exhibitions have included fashion photography, street art, modern Chinese urban design, and contemporary Japanese art. In 2018, it displayed Here We Are: Black Canadian Contemporary Art, featuring works by Black Canadian artists.

Natural history

The natural history galleries are located on the second floor of the museum and include collections and examples of various specimens such as bats, birds, and non-avian dinosaurs.

Nature and animals

The Life in Crisis: Schad Gallery of Biodiversity, designed by Reich+Petch and opened in late 2009, features endangered species, including specimens of a polar bear, a giant panda, a white rhinoceros, a Burmese python, Canadian coral, a leatherback sea turtle, a coelacanth, a Rafflesia flower, and many other rare species. Among these is Bull, a southern white rhinoceros known for helping save his species. The gallery also displays recently extinct species, such as the passenger pigeon. It emphasizes the importance of protecting the environment and educating the public about causes of extinction.

The Gallery of Birds displays many bird specimens from past centuries. A large “Birds in flight” display features stuffed birds in a glass enclosure. Dioramas help visitors learn about different bird species and how changes in the environment threaten their survival.

The Bat Cave is an immersive experience with over 20 bats and 800 models in a recreated habitat, complete with educational panels and videos. Originally opened in 1988, it reopened in 2010 after renovations. The exhibit includes a recreation of St. Clair Cave in central Jamaica.

Earth and space

The Teck Suite of Galleries: Earth's Treasures displays nearly 3,000 specimens of minerals, gems, meteorites, and rocks from 4.5 billion years ago to today. These items come from various locations, including the Earth, Moon, and beyond, showing the Earth’s geological changes. Notable pieces include fragments of the Tagish Lake meteorite and the Light of the Desert, the world’s largest faceted cerussite.

Fossils and evolution

The Reed Gallery of the Age of Mammals explores the rise of mammals after the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs during the Cenozoic Era. It features over 400 specimens from North and South America, including 30 fossil skeletons of extinct mammals. Highlights include the sabre-toothed nimravid Dinictis, an American Mastodon, and the giant megatherid sloth Eremotherium.

The James and Louise Temerty Galleries of the Age of Dinosaurs and Gallery of the Age of Mammals display complete non-avian dinosaur skeletons, early birds, reptiles, mammals, and marine animals from the Jurassic to Cretaceous periods. The main attractions are Gordo, one of the most complete Barosaurus specimens, and the holotype of the tube-crested hadrosaur Parasaurolophus walkeri.

The Willner Madge Gallery, Dawn of Life opened in 2021 and focuses on the evolution of life in the Paleozoic from billions of years ago up to the Late Triassic. It highlights fossil sites and collections from Canada.

World culture

The world culture galleries display a wide range of objects from around the globe, from Stone Age tools from China and Africa to 20th-century art and design. In July 2011, the museum expanded this collection with new permanent galleries. These galleries are located on the first, third, and fourth levels of the museum.

Africa, the Americas, and Asia–Pacific

The Shreyas and Mina Ajmera Gallery of Africa, the Americas and Asia-Pacific features 1,400 artifacts representing the artistic and cultural traditions of indigenous peoples from Africa, the Americas, the Asia-Pacific region, and Oceania. Displays include ceremonial masks, ceramics, and a shrunken head.

South Asia and Middle East

The Sir Christopher Ondaatje South Asian Gallery holds around 350 objects representing over 5,000 years of history from the Indian subcontinent. The gallery is divided into sections like “Material Remains,” “Imagining the Buddha,” “Visualizing Divinity,” “Passage to Enlightenment,” “Courtly Culture,” “Cultural Exchange,” and “Home and the World.” Visitors can see the (Untitled) Blue Lady sculpture by Mumbai-based artist Navjot Altaf.

The Wirth Gallery of the Middle East explores civilizations from the Palaeolithic Age to AD 1900 in the Fertile Crescent, stretching from the Eastern Mediterranean and Persia (Iran) and Mesopotamia (Iraq) to the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant (Lebanon and Israel). The gallery’s over 1,000 artifacts relate to writing, technology, spirituality, daily life, and warfare of ancient civilizations like the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians.

Mediterranean and Nile valley

The Eaton Gallery of Rome houses the largest collection of classical antiquities in Canada, with over 500 objects ranging from marble portraits to Roman jewellery. It also features the Bratty Exhibit of Etruria that provides insight into the Etruscans.

The Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Gallery of Rome and the Near East shows the lifestyle and culture of societies under Roman rule and their influence in the Near East. It also covers the history of the Byzantine Empire from AD 330 to 1453. Artifacts like jewellery, glasswork, and coins illustrate this history.

The A. G. Leventis Foundation Gallery of Ancient Cyprus displays around 300 artifacts from Cyprus between 2200 and 30 BC. The gallery includes a reconstructed open-air sanctuary and a rare bronze relief statue of a man carrying a large copper ingot.

The Gallery of Africa: Egypt focuses on ancient Egyptian life and the afterlife, featuring agricultural tools, jewellery, cosmetics, funerary items, and more. Highlights include canopic jars, mummy cases, and the gilded and painted sarcophagus and mummy of Djedmaatesankh. Other items include the Book of the Dead of Amen-em-hat, a 7-metre scroll, and the Bust of Cleopatra.

The Galleries of Africa: Nubia explore the civilization of Nubia in modern-day Sudan.

The Gallery of the Bronze Age Aegean features over 100 objects from the Cycladic, Minoan, Mycenaean, and Geometric periods of Ancient Greece, dating from 3200 BC to 700 BC. The collection includes a marble head of a female figure and a glass necklace.

The Gallery of Greece has 1,500 artifacts spanning the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods, including sculptures of gods, armour, and a coin collection.

Canadian

The Daphne Cockwell Gallery of Canada: First Peoples explores the culture of Canada’s earliest societies—the Aboriginal Peoples of Canada. The gallery features over 1,000 artifacts that reveal the economic and social forces influencing Native art.

The Royal Ontario Museum also has a major collection of Northwest Coast native art and artifacts acquired by Reverend Dr. Richard Whitfield Large at Bella Bella, British Columbia, between 1899 and 1906. It was part of the Kaxlaya Gvilas (Heiltsuk) exhibit created with the Heiltsuk Nation and the University of British Columbia.

There is also a rotating display of contemporary Native art, an area dedicated to pioneer artist Paul Kane, and a theatre for traditional storytelling.

The Sigmund Samuel Gallery of Canada, located in the Weston Family Wing, displayed early Canadian memorabilia—mostly historical decorative and pictorial arts—along with some historical artifacts. The gallery closed in 2022.

East Asian

The Chinese Galleries have four sections: the Bishop White Gallery of Chinese Temple Art, the Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Gallery of China, the Matthews Family Court of Chinese Sculpture, and the ROM Gallery of Chinese Architecture.

The Bishop White Gallery of Chinese Temple Art contains three of the world’s best-preserved temple wall paintings from the Mongol-ruled Yuan dynasty (AD 1271–1386) and wooden sculptures of various bodhisattvas from the 12th to 15th centuries.

The Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Gallery of China displays about 2,500 objects spanning nearly 7,000 years of Chinese history. It is divided into five sections, each focusing on a different period, showing items from jade discs to furniture.

The Matthews Family Court of Chinese Sculpture features a wide range of sculptures from 2,000 years of Chinese sculptural art, along with smaller objects exploring the development of religions in China from the 3rd to 19th centuries AD.

The ROM Gallery of Chinese Architecture holds one of the largest collections of Chinese architectural artifacts outside China and is the first such gallery in North America. It includes the Tomb of General Zu Dashou, with related artifacts, and a reconstruction of an Imperial Palace building from Beijing’s Forbidden City.

The Gallery of Korea is Canada’s only permanent gallery of Korean art, showcasing around 260 items from the Korean peninsula. Furniture, ceramics, metalwork, printing technology, painting, and decorative arts from the 3rd to 20th centuries AD illustrate Korean culture’s achievements.

European

The Samuel European Galleries display over 4,600 objects tracing the development of decorative and other arts in Europe from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. The period rooms show changes in style during the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical, and Victorian periods in Central and Western Europe. Specialized collections include Culture and Context, Judaica, Art Deco, and Arms and Armour. Notable pieces include the Earl of Pembroke's Armour, crafted between 1550 and 1570, and the Otho tazza, part of the Aldobrandini Tazze, a set of Renaissance cups featuring Julius Caesar and the first 11 Roman emperors.

Special Exhibition galleries

Some of the temporary exhibits at the Royal Ontario Museum have traveled around the world. One example is an exhibit called Bloodsuckers: Legends to Leeches.

Accessibility

The Royal Ontario Museum has many programs and services to help everyone enjoy the museum. This includes people who are blind or have low vision, people who are deaf, and others. These services include special tours where you can touch exhibits, books with raised lines and pictures, large-print guides, and more.

In 2008, the museum started a program called the Community Access Network. This program gives free tickets to community and charity groups, helping more people visit the museum. It works with groups like United Way of Greater Toronto and The Hospital for Sick Children to make learning fun for everyone.