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The Crystal Landmark

Title: Aerial view of Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, July 2007,
Image Courtesy: Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto © 2007. All rights reserved.

"Meet me outside the Crystal"

Toronto's newest landmark, The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, has added an exciting dimension to the architecture of the city. It is the new entranceway for the Royal Ontario Museum, providing additional gallery space. Since June when the structure was unveiled it has grown beyond the ROM's expectations as well as entering into the city's dialog as a place to meet.

William Thorsell, the CEO of The Royal Ontario Museum, spoke about the great response to the Crystal. "I love the reaction to the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal because it is such an animated conversation. It goes from one end to the other and it's changing. Any major movement within the arts, and I think it's a work of art, it moves people's perceptions. Even for those of us that produced it, including Daniel Libeskind's own perceptions. We are thinking about the space differently: interior space, public space and the outside. I don't think that this conversation will settle down for a couple of years. First we have to fill the Crystal and all of it's galleries. We have to finish off the street and see how we use that space. We are starting to use it aggressively now with Darfur/Darfur visual imagery, music, the interior part and the Hyacinth Gloria Chen Crystal Court. We will be doing projections and using that for different reasons. Then we have to see how the building settles in to being used as galleries, as places for public interchange and how it fits into the city over time. I've always thought that when you move to a new city that you're not really there until your second season, that's when you start seeing the city in your second spring. I think we'll have to wait a couple of years until we really get a sense of what is it? It's that powerful. It's that strange that not even I, who has been involved in the project for five or six years, could say that I know what it is. I have to wait longer along with everyone else to get a full sense of what it is or perhaps what it is not."

The Illuminated Crystal

Title: View of the Royal Ontario Museum with
the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal illuminated.,
Image Courtesy: Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto © 2007. All rights reserved.

"For our opening ceremonies last June 2 we discovered that the Crystal could be used as a huge screen. We illuminated the entire thing. It's very reflective and powerful. Visuals, video art and film are such a part of our language today. We realized that we've created a whole format here that we can use to bring attention to what we're doing or to do unique works onto the Crystal itself that bring the museum right out into the life of the city. We also discovered that inside it's large white walls can also be used to project videos."

The ROM has several upcoming exhibits that will demonstrate the capacity and capability of the Crystal. As William explains, "in October this year we're doing a whole season of Canada". The ROM's CEO refers to three exhibitions Canada Collects, Shapeshifters, Time Travelers and Story Tellers and Charles Pachter’s Canada (II). "One of the things to tie them all together is that we are using the inside of the walls of the Crystal to do a retroactive video show on Charlie Pachter’s Paintings. Instead of hanging the paintings we are doing a video remembrance of his art that moves across the walls on the inside of the Crystal. The building and the Plaza, which is a large and powerful public space are tools that we created, partly by intent, but we are surprised by what they are offering us. I think it will take a couple of years before we fully realize the capacity of the Crystal to animate the city from the outside and to be a new gallery, sort of like a public gallery, by it's capacity to be projected upon and to have the Plaza be used for various stations."

The Architect: Daniel Libeskind

"In his case, and I've said to him, he's pulled the curtain back on yet another face of beauty, just like the impressionists did in the 1860s and 1870s. That was a very radical and controversial movement that was rejected in France for twenty years. Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne were absolutely rejected by the establishment because they were looking at a radical new way of seeing things, an attractive way of seeing things. Daniel is one of the artists in the world working in three-dimensions: architecture."

Title: Concept sketch for the ROM
Permanent Collection: Studio Daniel Libeskind © 2007. All rights reserved.
Image Courtesy: Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

There is controversy surrounding the innovative architects. William Thorsell addressed these concerns, "Gehry and Libeskind generate controversy and disorientation because they are using another language to define both form and space. They are dealing with psychology as well as function. The modern style was form follows function in a very practical style. Of course you have to have function. These new artists of architecture, if I may call them that, are dealing with emotions, psychology and symbolism. They are dealing with the whole gamut of what the new experience is. All great art does that. In a way it is liberating architecture from an interesting and aesthetic period of the last century to a much more voluptuous period now, which has it's risks, but I think it's a wonderful move to be making abetted by technology and engineering. Without the computer to aid in design, without some of the technologies and materials to build that are available these days, many of these buildings would not have been possible."

The Donor: Michael Lee-Chin

The Crystal's Additional Benefits: Darfur/Darfur

Title: A tense Sudanese Liberation Army Rebel Stands Guard
Photographer: Mark Brecke
Image Courtesy: Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Recently the Crystal was used in conjunction with Darfur/Darfur. It is a photography exhibit of 150 images captured by seven photojournalists and one former U.S. marine. The provocative imagery tells the tale of the war torn Sudan. Several of the images were projected on the Crystal, visible at night as part of the ROM's participation in the Toronto International Film Festival.

A Season of Canada Exhibitions

The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal has increased the ROM's size by over 16,000 sq. meters or 174,000 sq ft., which will be used for new permanent galleries, public space and support space. With all that extra room it is expected the ROM will fill it with exhibitions designed to impress the public.

Shapeshifters, Time Travellers and Story Tellers
October 6, 20007 - February 28, 2007

Title: Cetology (2002)
Artist: Brian Jungen (Canadian)
Medium: Plastic and Metal
Permanent Collection: Vancouver Art Gallery
Purchased with the financial support of
The Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance Program
and the Vancouver Art Gallery Acquisition Fund, VAG 2003.8 a-z,
Photo: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery
Image Courtesy: Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Shapeshifters draws on works from the ROM's impressive permanent collection alongside creations of eight Aboriginal contemporary artists. It is one of the exhibits forming the museum's A Season of Canada focus to help inaugurate the Crystal. More about this exhibit here.

Canada Collects: Treasures from Across the Nation
October 6, 2007 to January 6, 2008

Title: Pierre Trudeau’s Canoe, circa 1968
Medium: Birchbark
Dimensions: 76 cm wide x 5 m long
On loan from the Canadian Canoe Museum,
courtesy of the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Estate
Image Courtesy: The Royal Ontario Museum

The ROM's Director and CEO is enthusiastic about the upcoming season at the ROM. "Canada Collects has turned out to be a wonderful thing. A number of years ago we were talking about how we were going to launch the new Garfield Weston exhibition hall. We wanted to do a new kind of exhibition, it had to be something different, something unusual. We came up with the idea of sharing the moment in the sense that we are just one museum of many fine museums with different mandates and purposes all over the country. We asked every major museum in Canada, all the national museums, all provincial museums and some private collectors and said, 'Would you select one wonderful thing from your collection that illustrates what you do to bring in to our show called Canada Collects?' It shows the diversity, depth and purposes of collecting right across the country. It shares the moment in Canada saying all museums are important whatever their size whatever their mandates. We have everything here ranging from a heart-breaking Pieta from the 17th Century made of wood, to the Avro Arrow's Landing Gear from the Aviation Museum, to a fabulous painting from the Edmonton Art Gallery, to installation art, to Pierre Trudeau's canoe, to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms signed by Queen Elizabeth in 1982 from the Archives, to a Cree coat from the 19th Century. There is a tremendous variety of touching things that each label tells you what you are seeing and about the institution, what it is, where it is, when it was founded, what's it for. You get a tour of Canadian museums and institutions through these representative artifacts."

More about this exhibit in a feature article here.

Charles Pachter's Canada (II)
October 6, 2007 - February 28, 2008

Title: The Painted Flag, 2002
Artist: Charles Pachter (Canadian b. 1942)
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Dimensions: 152.4 cm (width), 76.2 cm (height)
Image ©: Charles Pachter
Image Courtesy: Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

The ROM is a digital canvas celebrating the long and imaginative career of Canadian icon, Charles Pachter. He is known for his Hockey Knights in Canada series, which are murals located on the walls of Toronto's College Street subway station. Over 50 of the artist's best known images celebrating Canadiana are projected onto the east wall of the Hyacinth Gloria Chen Court.

As Charles Pachter says of this exhibit, "It's an artist's dream come true."

Future Exhibits at the ROM

Darwin
March 8 - August 4, 2008

Title: Origin of Species Book.
An original 1859 edition of The Origin of Species
is just one of the many personal items on display in this
elaborate reproduction of Darwin's study from Down House
one of the centerpiece attractions of Darwin,
the most in depth exhibition ever mounted on this highly original thinker.
Photograph: © Denis Finnin, AMNH
Image Courtesy: Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Darwin's discoveries and research altered the perception of the origin of the species and he was the catalyst launching modern biological science. Known primarily for his theory of evolution the scientist also explored the fields of botany, geology and was a naturalist.

Title: Go it Charlie! Cartoon
This caricature of a young Charles Darwin
riding a giant beetle was
drawn by fellow beetle collector Albert Way in1832.
© By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library
Image Courtesy: Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

The ROM's collection includes Natural History, making Darwin fit into the museum's mandate. As William Thorsell says, "the ROM is very unusual in two ways. It is a universal museum of cultures. It covers all cultures at all times. It is very rare." He named the four international institutions that share this goal: The British Museum, the V&A, the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the ROM. "We happen to live in a country that is becoming almost every culture. Because of Renaissance ROM we will be able to bring out collections that span the world, many of which have been stranded in our vaults for 50 years. We'll have Africa, Central America, Asia-Pacific, Japan, Korea and Canadian First Peoples. Textiles will open up in the spring and we also have Natural History. We plan to start playing the card of the environment with the Dinosaur Gallery, a famous part of our collection, and it reopens in December. I think the ROM is like an encyclopedia. It is like a 19th Century ideal of an encyclopedia in three dimensions, it allows us to do whatever we want in a sense, whatever inspires us to move."

The ROM's CEO and Director concludes, "we have built a lot more space and there are a number of areas where we can do different exhibitions and programs all at the same time. In the case of our four Canadian installations opening in October, which includes the new permanent gallery of Canada. Then we have Canada Collects which asks what are all the other museums doing, then we have the group show of aboriginal artists that raise issues about and comment on our own collections. Then we have the interesting video retrospective of Charlie Pachter’s Paintings. In the school system side, when the kids come in, we can introduce them back into our Canadian content."

The Crystal is bold and bright and now it's an integral part of the Toronto cultural scene. It should be and will be used to illustrate the best and brightest of Canadian and multiple cultures celebrating a diverse city and country.

A Season of Canada Exhibits: