Wish List: The ROM

-
East-facing façade of the Royal Ontario Museum,
built in 1933, courtesy of Wikipedia
It’s months shy of a decade since first I visited the ROM, the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto. Back then, the ROM was an example of Italianate Neo-Romanesque architecture – a beautiful building commanding Bloor Street. During my stay in 2002, I had heard about the new plans for the ROM and this talk about an addition that would look like a chrysalis. The vision of something so radically incongruous coming out of an original traditional structure always piques my fancy.

Now, with my recently-expedited renewed passport, I will be heading back to YYZ for work and I have taken an extra day to get there on my dime to return to this fantastic museum, which is Canada's largest museum of world culture and natural history and one of the largest museums in North America, in general. It’s no Bata Shoe Museum, but that’s okay.

While I am excited to see the dinosaur specimens and exhibits focusing on the War of 1812’s bicentennial; it’s the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal that is drawing me to the ROM. Inspired by the ROM’s gem and mineral collection, the Crystal was quickly dubbed as such because of its crystalline shape from the original concept sketch. The architect, Daniel Libeskind, initially penned his idea on paper napkins while attending a family wedding at the ROM. This new addition is composed of five interlocking, self-supporting prisms that, per the ROM’s website, “co-exist but are not attached to the original ROM building, except for the bridges that link them.” The exterior is a fourth glass and three-fourths aluminum and the interior houses seven galleries for artifacts and Canada’s largest temporary exhibition hall. Providing openness and accessibility as well as blurring the boundaries between the public street and the private galleries, the Crystal is where both people and artifacts interact to give the museum life.

The ROM addition sketch on a paper napkin
All images, except where noted, are courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum: Dawn of the Crystal Age.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The day we lost Pluto

-
or (And your little dog, Goofy, too!) It’s official, the International Astronomical Union (IAU), founded in 1919, has defined (I never had that much time in my life to define something -- most of my identify and define tests were given in the time frame of 40 minutes, slackers.) what a planet is: A planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit. According to this definition, Pluto has been demoted from a planet to a dwarf planet. A dwarf planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite. Pluto is a dwarf planet by the above definition and is ...
Read more

Isaac

-
On "Confessions on a Dance Floor," there's a song Isaac , which I have fallen in love with. There's a great Yemenite chant intermingled in the song, which is translated into "if all of the doors of all of the generous peoples' homes are closed to you, the gates of heaven will always be open." Of course, it's controversial. Some rabbis has called her blasphemous (Madonna blasphemous?) since they believed the song to be about a 15th century Kabbalist, Isaac Lurier. It is forbidden to invoke his name in order to make a profit. Madonna's response is that she named the song after the cantor, Yitzhak (Isaac in English) Sinwani, for lack of a better name. (Seriously, who cares, Madge is R.C. and she's known for blasphemy. Didn't she really give JPII a heartattack that finally did him in in April?) Madonna's lyrics are: Staring up into the heavens In this hell that binds your hands Will you sacrifice your comfort Make your way in a foreign la...
Read more

Braciole

-
While I had time off during the Christmas break, I spent it working on a braciole recipe for the slow cooker.   In Italian American cuisine, braciole (the word is commonly pronounced /ˌbrä-zhəl/ from the Sicilian dialect) is the name given to thin slices of meat, usually beef, that are prepared as a roulade, a meat slice rolled around a filling then browned and braised. When I first had braciole, they were small individual servings, like the German Rouladen.  However in my search for a slow cooker version, I discovered recipes that made a large roulade versus the individual portions.  If Giada can do it, then so can I. The effort that goes into crafting the individual braciole is intense. Therefore, I was excited that most of the recipes called for a big roast sized braciole.  Cutting down the directions to a comfortable level of simplicity makes for a delicious meal without the hours of toil and let's the cook enjoy the food. I played with these two recipes, Bo...
Read more