The Royal Ontario Museum is located at Queen’s Park and near of the University of Toronto. The museum was established by the government at 1912, was run by the University of Toronto until 1955 and now an independent institution.It is the largest museum of Canada and the fifth in North America. It showcases six (6) million objects and every year sixty seven thousand (67,000) are added.
The Royal Ontario Museum also called ROM (derived from the initials of the Royal Ontario Museum) had five (5) major fields namely; geology, archaeology, paleontology, mineralogy and zoology and now two main fields the Natural history galleries and World culture galleries.
The ROM opened in March 14, 1914 by the Governor General of Canada, The Duke of Connaught. Designed by Frank Darling and John A. Pearson, the original museum had an Italian neo-Romanesque inspired with arched windows and boulders, decorative ledges and quoins.
The ROM has been renovated three times: the first renovation added a new wing and a new entrance; Byzantine inspired rotunda had a mosaic ceiling, with glass tiles, geometric patterns, real and mythical creatures on it. The new wing was designed by Alfred H. Chapman and James Oxley and was opened October 12, 1933.
The second renovation added the terrace galleries of Queen Elizabeth II at the north and curatorial center and the McLaughlin Planetarium at the south of the building. The design of the expansion won the Governor General’s Award for Architecture.
The third renovation had an additional center piece, the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal designed by Daniel Libeskind and Bregman and Hamann Architects, recently opened. Some galleries and buildings are also being restored, and reopening of the renovated galleries will be this year 2008. December 26, 2005 reopened a series of exhibits of the art and history of Japan, China, Korea and Aboriginal peoples of Canada and the ten (10) renovated galleries.
The two categories of the museum, the Natural history and World culture galleries have sub categories. The Natural History showcases the collections of animals around the world. It has Gallery for Birds, shows hundreds of species of birds and their different habitats, also has the exhibit of an instinct bird, the passenger Pigeon.
The Gallery for Insects and Their Relatives has an exhibit of live exotic tarantulas, cockroaches and insects, though the species of these insects are native of Canada. In the Gallery of Mammals shows the dioramas of the indigenous animals of North America and the Bat cave of St. Clair in Jamaica and species of reptiles in the Gallery of the Reptiles.
There is a Hands-On Biodiversity Gallery which enables you to experience nature; they have a real beehive encased in a glass and look at specimens. In World culture galleries shows the artifacts, culture and history of some countries, namely the galleries are the Gallery of Ancient Cyprus, Egypt, Canada, Korea, Greece, Islam, The Roman World, the Herman Herzog Levy Gallery, the Samuel European Galleries and the Samuel Hall-Currelly Gallery includes Prince Takamado Gallery of Japan.
The most visited areas of the museum are the gallery of Nubia which shows the remains of the settlement of Northern Sudan which dates from 1000 – 800 B. C. and the Evloution Gallery, it is an audiovisual presentation of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
The Royal Ontario Museum also has camps for children during summer and Saturday mornings.
