Every Thursday at 10 am on Instagram we chat with a different ROM expert ready to answer your burning questions on a different subject. This time on Ask ROM Anything we are talking to Kiron Mukherjee, the ROMKids Coordinator & Camp Director. Kiron organizes and executes (along with a huge team!) the Royal Ontario Museum’s family and children’s programs.
Kiron has been with the museum for 18 years and might just know more about the ROM than any other staff member. He is the unofficial expert of “cool ROM history”, including the very first museum camp, facts about our collection old and new, and the best ROM ghost stories!
Kiron started volunteering at the ROM when he was 14 years old and has never looked back. Though he majored in history at York University, Kiron considers his years as a ROMKids camper to be a formative part of his education.
He strives to provide engaging and educational programming for kids and families, through 6 different ROM Camps including Saturday Club, the longest running museum camp in the world! He hopes that future generations can look back at their ROM experiences as fondly as he does.
Q. What’s the best way to get in touch with ROM Ghosts?
A. Spend your day in the golden Rotunda, and gaze upon Currelly’s balcony.
Currelly, our first director, and most famous ghost, had his office built on the left of the balcony, so that he could be close to the galleries, and visitors. In life, he would often lean on the balcony and watch the visitors come and go. After his passing, and the installation of fire escapes, his office and access to the balcony was boarded up. But visitors would still report seeing a man like Currelly, walk across, look peacefully at his galleries and disappear.
Q. What part of the museum do you see campers being most interested in?
A. I once taught a group of 5-year-olds, and for 8 Saturdays we’d visit the coral reef aquarium at least once per day. They were mesmerized, and just had to say hi to their fish friends!
It depends on age, but the Schad Gallery of Biodiversity is full of vibrant colours, detailed dioramas, and riveting stories that really pull you in.
Q. What is your dream museum exhibition?
A. My dream exhibit is an exhibit made by the children. During Summer Club we fill the Hands-on galleries on Fridays to show off the kids’ work. But I’d love something more permanent, that gets to exist longer than an afternoon or weekend. Museums belong to the people, and so the people should be reflected in the exhibits.
Q. What is your favourite movie for indoor lunch?
A. Ratatouille, because there’s not really a big baddie or anything. But for morning movies my absolute favourite is Blackfly, really the anthem of Summer Club!
Q. What is your favourite story to tell kids?
A. I love telling children about the ghosts of the Museum and linking it to thinking critically about the world around us. But really my favourite is telling the history of ROM Camp, the incredible women that built it, and the thousands upon thousands of children that have grown up at the Museum. We have a thrilling and fascinating history, and every camper is a part of it!
Q. What is the coolest thing about working at the ROM?
A. Easy! It’s seeing the kids grow up. I’ve spent more than half my life doing this and in that time, I’ve gone from being a scared teen trying to comfort a camper who just tripped, to then see that same kid, now a teen counsellor too, do the same thing for their camper. Growing up with these families has brought great joy to my life!
Q. What age is best for starting ROM Camp?
A. Any age! Our toddler program starts at 2, and it’s been fun seeing these children graduate into camp at 4—we do a little party for them, and there’s lots of bubbles! I started when I was a little bit older and had a blast. If you love engaging with science, art, and history, and enjoy a good story, ROM Camp is for you!
Q. What has been your most memorable moment with kids?
A. There are so many. Small ones like when that kid tried to drink a muffin. The time the entire camp went for a water fight in Philosopher’s Walk. That time the kids of Beyond Boundaries, decided, on their own, to have a funeral for a bird they found that passed away. When we ran the camp during the great blackout of 2003 with no one else in the ROM. Or more personal ones, like seeing your kids graduate out of the 1 to 1 support program and become counsellors themselves. Overwhelmed right now just thinking about it!
Q. What’s your favourite hidden secret about the ROM?
A. This one was hard, but I’m going with the delicious chives on our roof. It’s a lot of fun up there!
Q. What part of implementing programs is your favourite?
A. My favourite part of the planning stages of camp is hiring the staff and plugging them into the course lineup. It’s like getting the band back together.
Our teachers are paleontologists, professors, artists, journalists, and school teachers by trade, but they spend their Saturdays and summers at ROM Camp because they have just as much fun as the kids. Not to mention onboarding the counsellors, who often were campers themselves just a year before!
Q. What is your favourite part of the ROM?
A. I was going to say the dinosaur gallery, but it’s definitely my office, the ROMKids Studio. It’s where all the action is! Teachers planning, counsellors prepping, kids being silly. Plus, I get to work with my best friends.
Q. Did you take part in the co-op program? If so, how did it benefit you?
A. While I did not go through the co-op program here, I did come to camp here as a kid, and that greatly informed my future career. After camp, I did the leader-in-training program, became a volunteer, and now 18 years later, I’m running the whole thing!
We know that volunteering, doing a placement, or working here in your younger years, can have a profound impact on the professional direction you take in life. After all, the galleries are the best classrooms!
Q. Is there a second ghost? I’ve heard there’s a girl too.
A. Our two most famous ghosts are Currelly, and Celeste, the lost girl of the Planetarium. In the 70s, Celeste was one of the most likely Toronto spirits to be experienced. After the Planetarium shut down, she continued to haunt the children’s museum that took over, allegedly playing with the toys overnight.
Our third ghost is lesser-known and more recent—the European Spector, otherwise known as the Lady in the Dress.
Q. What advice do you have for someone who would love to work at the museum?
A. Get involved! If you’re in school, maybe volunteer, to get a sense of what it’s like. We hire all our counsellors from our volunteer pool, and the majority of our teachers used to be a counsellor! Heck, the incoming Director of the Field Museum, was an Instructor with us for many years in the 90s. Who knows where you’ll go!
Q. What’s your favourite part of the ROM that’s no longer there?
A. Gotta say old dinosaur gallery was a thing of beauty, all my favourite animals placed in gorgeous dioramas—it was like time travel.
My mom would bring me every Saturday as kid, just to gaze at the dinosaurs. And of course, afterwards, we’d go to the McDonalds across the street—a tradition for many families to this day!
Q. What can you tell us about the history of ROM camp?
A. I could go on for days about the history of ROM Camp, and the incredible women who built it, like Eugina Berlin the first Camp Director, who ran this thing from the 40s to the 70s. But ROM Camp never would have happened without the perseverance of Ruth Home, who fought with Currelly in the 30s to make the Museum accessible to children and women.
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