Royal Ontario Museum Blog
Monthly Archive: December
Not just for show: how and why museum specimens are collected
Guest blog by Environmental Visual Communication student Samantha Stephens
The sign on the door seemed quite appropriate. “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” I imagine that, as this quote from Dante’s Inferno indicates, this might be what hell feels like. As this last barrier swings open and the dim room is revealed, the swarm of hundreds of tiny creatures moving across the concrete floor completes that vision. However, for some of the ROM’s tireless workers, this environment is heaven. Here resides the dermestid beetle colony. These ravenous beetles are eagerly seeking their next meal. Manoeuvring themselves into the crevices of skeletons, they strip the flesh from delicate specimens with more precision and speed than the nimblest of human fingers.
#ThrowbackThursday: A Very Hot Evening
In September, 1971, the ROM opened the landmark exhibition Keep Me Warm One Night, a kaleidoscopic display of over 500 pieces of Canadian handweaving. It was the culmination of decades of pioneering research and collecting by the ROM curatorial powerhouse duo ‘Burnham and Burnham’, aka Dorothy K. Burnham and Harold B. Burnham.
Artists of the Floating World, Part I
Written by Josiah Ariyama
Supervised by Dr. Asato Ikeda
A Third Gender: Beautiful Youths in Japanese Prints, exhibited at the ROM from May until November, 2016 offers but a glimpse into the lives of Wakashu, or “young companions” living in Edo period Japan (1603-1868). The exhibition not only features a plethora of great woodblock prints, but exacerbates the viewer’s imaginary journey into this time through the use of film, screens, and sartorial artefacts such as armour, kimono and hair ornaments.
#ThrowbackThursday: Working Like Mad
In September, 1971, the ROM opened the landmark exhibition Keep Me Warm One Night, a kaleidoscopic display of over 500 pieces of Canadian handweaving. It was the culmination of decades of pioneering research and collecting by the ROM curatorial powerhouse duo ‘Burnham and Burnham’, aka Dorothy K. Burnham and Harold B. Burnham.
Remembering Ancient Pottery Traditions
This summer Wyandot artists Richard Zane Smith and Catherine Tammaro visited the Royal Ontario Museum’s New World Archaeology collections. The purpose of their visit was to study a small sample of the ROM’s Wendat pottery collections in order to gain information on ancestral Wendat and Tionontati ceramic techniques.
#ThrowbackThursday: Keep Me Warm One Night
Exactly forty-five years ago, in September, 1971, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) opened the landmark exhibition Keep me Warm One Night, a kaleidoscopic display of over 500 pieces of Canadian handweaving. It was the culmination of decades of pioneering research and collecting by the ROM curatorial powerhouse duo ‘Burnham and Burnham’, aka Dorothy K. Burnham and Harold B. Burnham.
Exhibit A: Dior Dress
“In a machine age, dressmaking is one of the last refuges of the human, the personal, the inimitable.”
— Christian Dior
Commissioned by the ROM, Passage #5 was designed by John Galliano for Christian Dior Haute Couture. This dramatic coat-dress was inspired by fashion illustrator René Gruau’s drawings from the 1940s and 1950s and is a 21st-century reworking of Dior’s 1947 New Look collection (his first).
A Story of Ghana: Exploring the Asafo Flags at the ROM
Since the beginning of the month, the Royal Ontario Museum has been host to a stunning display of historic Ghanaian imagery, in the form of the flags used by the Asafo fighting groups to send messages to friends and enemies alike. These flags document many of the events and histories that were of value to the Fante states and are expressive, powerful, and of great importance to understanding the history of the region as we know it today. As a collection, they make up a fascinating display of aesthetic storytelling that reveals much, and gives each viewer a sense of what was important to each community under each flag at various points throughout each one's history, right up to the present day.
The LMS Lab
From discovering new species to preserving endangered ones, the ROM’s LMS uses genetic sequencing to study specimens.
Profile: Canada's Astronaut
Chris Hadfield sits down with ROM Magazine and talks space, dinos, and risk.
