Royal Ontario Museum - History

History

The Royal Ontario Museum was established on April 16, 1912, with the signing of the Ontario Legislature’s ROM Act. The Government of Ontario and the University of Toronto funded the construction and development of the museum. On March 19, 1914, at 3:00 pm, the Duke of Connaught, also the Governor General of Canada, officially opened the Royal Ontario Museum to the public. The museum’s location at the edge of Toronto's built-up area, far from the city's central business district, was selected mainly for its proximity to the University of Toronto. The original building was constructed on the western edge of the property along the university's Philosopher's Walk, with its main entrance facing out onto Bloor Street. This was the first phase of a two-part construction plan that intended on expanding the museum towards Queen's Park Crescent, ultimately creating a H-shaped structure. Many of the museum's artifacts at this time were transferred from its predecessor, the Museum of Natural History and Fine Arts at the Toronto Normal School.

The first expansion to the Royal Ontario Museum publicly opened on October 12, 1933. The renovation saw the construction of the south wing fronting onto Queen's Park, and required the demolition of Argyle House, a Victorian mansion once located at 100 Queen's Park. As this occurred during the Great Depression, an effort was made to primarily use local building materials and workers capable of manually excavating the building's foundations. Teams of workers alternated weeks of service due to the physically draining nature of the job.

On October 26, 1968, the ROM opened the McLaughlin Planetarium on the south-end of the property after receiving a $2 million donation from Colonel R. Samuel McLaughlin. By the 1980s, however, the planetarium’s audiences were dwindling, and the facility was forced to shut down in November 1995 due to budget cuts. The space temporarily reopened from 1998 to 2002 after being leased to Children's Own Museum. In 2009, the ROM sold the building to the University of Toronto for $22 million, and ensured that it would continue to be used for institutional, academic purposes.

The second major addition to the museum was the Queen Elizabeth II Terrace Galleries on the north side of the building, and a curatorial centre built on the south, which started in 1978, and was completed in 1984. The new construction meant that a former outdoor "Chinese Garden" to the north of the building facing Bloor, along with an adjoining indoor restaurant, had to be dismantled. Opened in 1984 by Queen Elizabeth II, a $55 million expansion took the form of layered volumes, each rising layer stepping back from Bloor Street, hence creating a layered terrace effect. The design of this expansion won a Governor General's Award in Architecture.

In 1989, activists complained about its Into the Heart of Africa exhibit, forcing the curator, Jeanne Cannizzo, to resign.

Beginning in 2002, the museum underwent a major renovation and expansion project dubbed as Renaissance ROM. The Provincial and Federal governments, both supporters of this venture, contributed $60 million towards the project. The campaign aimed to not only raise annual visitor attendance from 750,000 to between 1.3 and 1.6 million, but to generate additional funding opportunities to support the museum's research, conservation, galleries, and educational public programs as well. The centrepiece of the project, the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, was a major addition to the building's original framework. The structure was created by architect Daniel Libeskind, whose design was selected from among 50 finalists in an international competition. The design saw the Terrace Galleries torn down (curatorial centre to the south remains) and replaced with a Deconstructivist crystalline-form structure, named after Michael Lee-Chin who donated $30 million towards its construction. Existing galleries and buildings were also upgraded, along with the installation of multiple new exhibits over a period of months. The first phase of the Renaissance ROM project, the Ten Renovated Galleries in the Historic Buildings, opened to the public on December 26, 2005. The Architectural Opening for the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, however, took place years later on June 2, 2007. The final cost of the project was approximately C$270 million.