beaconer
Active Member
The Curse of the Aluminum Crystal
http://www.torontolife.com/features/curse-aluminum-crystal/
http://www.torontolife.com/features/curse-aluminum-crystal/
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
Yes, that's the piece we discussed a month ago.
Did anyone else get the ROM's online members' survey last week?
Did anyone else get the ROM's online members' survey last week?
casaguy
Senior Member
TELEVISION: DOCUMENTARIES
Diary of a Crystal gazer: Documenting the ROM reno
KATE TAYLOR
September 10, 2008
In a basement editing suite, documentarian Kenton Vaughan is still combing through some of the 400 hours of film footage he has shot at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum over the past five years. The ROM's Michael Lee-Chin Crystal wasn't built in a day and neither was The Museum, Vaughan's two-part TV documentary about the controversial and much-delayed construction project that premieres on CBC Television tomorrow.
"I looked at the design, and I am not an architect ... I had no illusions it was going to open in December, 2005 [as originally scheduled]," Vaughan said in an interview. "I was banking on it being at least a year over. It was 2½ years over ..."
"... which is eons in filmmaking," pipes in editor Greg West, whose job has been to tame and chop the footage for both the CBC doc and a longer version that will be released to festivals and on DVD by the National Film Board.
The Crystal's "architectural" opening in June, 2007, and then the gradual opening of new galleries in 2008 came just in time for Vaughan: Another six months of delay and he would have had to refinance the project because the deadline attached to his grant money would have expired.
Luckily, he's a patient person, interested in projects that require the long haul. "The best documentaries get made over five or 10 years," he said.
He was convinced that the lengthy renovation of an important public institution such as the ROM could create such a film. Reading in the newspaper in 2001 that the ROM was about to embark on a major expansion, he said to himself: "I bet someone's making a documentary about that. ... It was like in the cartoons. The light bulb went on: Why not me?"
At the ROM, meanwhile, Vaughan came to have his own steel-toed boots, his visits to the construction site became so routine. When he first approached the museum with his idea for a documentary, ROM chief executive officer William Thorsell and his staff agreed with alacrity.
"Everybody involved felt this was an important document," he said. "... This was part of history and deserved to be recalled."
Perhaps that explains the startling candour of the ROM staffers who appear in the film: In particular, paleontologist Janet Waddington expresses her skepticism about the design by architect Daniel Libeskind, which created irregular spaces in which it is difficult to display artifacts. In the second part of the film, she appears jubilantly on opening night, delighted with the airy new dinosaur gallery, although she still calls the building "dysfunctional."
"The people in the film all bring an open-mindedness to it," Vaughan argues. "If we wanted to make a reality TV show, we could have found the really bitter ones - every organization has them. We wanted people who were open-minded about the process so there would be a journey."
Vaughan caught some remarkable behind-the-scenes moments, such as the period on the construction site when it became clear that Libeskind's design for the Crystal was not supporting its own weight and would need to be reinforced with extra steel. And he captured some decisive public ones: His images of a chastened Thorsell at the meeting where citizens tore into the plan to erect a condo tower at the southern end of the ROM site foretell of its cancellation.
However, while The Museum reveals many of the delays, disasters and criticisms the project suffered, it is by no means an indictment of the building.
"We weren't journalists coming in to do an exposé; we were witnesses," Vaughan said.
The film's protagonist is not Libeskind, whom Vaughan describes as an enigma, repeating a question raised in the film as to whether the ROM represents the star architect's best work. Rather it is the dogged Thorsell, the man who got something big and controversial built in a city that hates to commit.
"Could this have been done without a visionary leader at the top? I don't think it could have, whether you agree with that vision or not," Vaughan said. "I was interested in leadership."
In keeping with this objective stance, he makes no predictions for the ROM's future, but he does note that Thorsell may have overestimated the size of audience willing to pay $22 to visit the renovated museum, and that his decision to open fine art galleries before the family-friendly natural-science ones may have been a miscalculation.
"My line is that's still too early to tell because there are important galleries that aren't open yet," he said. "In terms of the business model, it will take two or three years. Any predictions of fiasco are premature."
Part 1 of The Museum airs on CBC-TV's Doc Zone tomorrow at 9 p.m. The second part airs the same time and day next week.
Diary of a Crystal gazer: Documenting the ROM reno
KATE TAYLOR
September 10, 2008
In a basement editing suite, documentarian Kenton Vaughan is still combing through some of the 400 hours of film footage he has shot at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum over the past five years. The ROM's Michael Lee-Chin Crystal wasn't built in a day and neither was The Museum, Vaughan's two-part TV documentary about the controversial and much-delayed construction project that premieres on CBC Television tomorrow.
"I looked at the design, and I am not an architect ... I had no illusions it was going to open in December, 2005 [as originally scheduled]," Vaughan said in an interview. "I was banking on it being at least a year over. It was 2½ years over ..."
"... which is eons in filmmaking," pipes in editor Greg West, whose job has been to tame and chop the footage for both the CBC doc and a longer version that will be released to festivals and on DVD by the National Film Board.
The Crystal's "architectural" opening in June, 2007, and then the gradual opening of new galleries in 2008 came just in time for Vaughan: Another six months of delay and he would have had to refinance the project because the deadline attached to his grant money would have expired.
Luckily, he's a patient person, interested in projects that require the long haul. "The best documentaries get made over five or 10 years," he said.
He was convinced that the lengthy renovation of an important public institution such as the ROM could create such a film. Reading in the newspaper in 2001 that the ROM was about to embark on a major expansion, he said to himself: "I bet someone's making a documentary about that. ... It was like in the cartoons. The light bulb went on: Why not me?"
At the ROM, meanwhile, Vaughan came to have his own steel-toed boots, his visits to the construction site became so routine. When he first approached the museum with his idea for a documentary, ROM chief executive officer William Thorsell and his staff agreed with alacrity.
"Everybody involved felt this was an important document," he said. "... This was part of history and deserved to be recalled."
Perhaps that explains the startling candour of the ROM staffers who appear in the film: In particular, paleontologist Janet Waddington expresses her skepticism about the design by architect Daniel Libeskind, which created irregular spaces in which it is difficult to display artifacts. In the second part of the film, she appears jubilantly on opening night, delighted with the airy new dinosaur gallery, although she still calls the building "dysfunctional."
"The people in the film all bring an open-mindedness to it," Vaughan argues. "If we wanted to make a reality TV show, we could have found the really bitter ones - every organization has them. We wanted people who were open-minded about the process so there would be a journey."
Vaughan caught some remarkable behind-the-scenes moments, such as the period on the construction site when it became clear that Libeskind's design for the Crystal was not supporting its own weight and would need to be reinforced with extra steel. And he captured some decisive public ones: His images of a chastened Thorsell at the meeting where citizens tore into the plan to erect a condo tower at the southern end of the ROM site foretell of its cancellation.
However, while The Museum reveals many of the delays, disasters and criticisms the project suffered, it is by no means an indictment of the building.
"We weren't journalists coming in to do an exposé; we were witnesses," Vaughan said.
The film's protagonist is not Libeskind, whom Vaughan describes as an enigma, repeating a question raised in the film as to whether the ROM represents the star architect's best work. Rather it is the dogged Thorsell, the man who got something big and controversial built in a city that hates to commit.
"Could this have been done without a visionary leader at the top? I don't think it could have, whether you agree with that vision or not," Vaughan said. "I was interested in leadership."
In keeping with this objective stance, he makes no predictions for the ROM's future, but he does note that Thorsell may have overestimated the size of audience willing to pay $22 to visit the renovated museum, and that his decision to open fine art galleries before the family-friendly natural-science ones may have been a miscalculation.
"My line is that's still too early to tell because there are important galleries that aren't open yet," he said. "In terms of the business model, it will take two or three years. Any predictions of fiasco are premature."
Part 1 of The Museum airs on CBC-TV's Doc Zone tomorrow at 9 p.m. The second part airs the same time and day next week.
CharmAlarm
Active Member
Does anyone know what's going on outside the ROM these days? There were two very large 'cherry picker' type cranes perched over the crystal this morning. Wondering if they're already making repairs in anticipation of winter or ...maybe replacing the aluminum siding.
SP!RE
°°°°°°
There's a sign up. They are preparing it for the winter by installing the eavestroughs...
wyliepoon
Senior Member
adma
Superstar
Well, if it weren't for Eves' trough, the place wouldn't even exist. (Provincial Tory funding humour.)
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
The new Gallery of Minerals opened last week on the second floor of the east wing, displaying far more pretty hunks of rock than I recall seeing in the previous mineralogy gallery downstairs - attractively displayed, with a touch-screen identification system. I don't usually gravitate towards the "natural world" galleries, but this one has turned out to be a surprising favourite of mine. In both the Crystal and the heritage galleries, the new display cases have a design consistency to them - with most of the objects in free-standing displays away from the walls, as befits a museum rather than an art gallery.
I recently took my elderly mother on a wheelchair tour of the entire ROM - and the AGO ( on different days! ) - and both tours took about three and a half hours, stepping on the gas as much as I could. A great workout of muscle groups I don't usually use. I found both buildings logical enough to navigate.
The legacy of different ceiling heights in the ROM's east and west wings remains an irritant though. If I recall, there used to be a wheelchair system in the stairwell just near the Rotunda, but the Crystal galleries now have wheelchair elevators that require you to contact staff to operate. We didn't, since my Mother is able to use stairs, and she only had to change grade once that way. The Crystal is a logical solution to linking the heritage wings at the north end of the site - and creating a flow between the collections housed in them that the Terrace Galleries didn't.
There was more back-tracking and legwork to get through the smaller, more numerous AGO galleries - the Works on Paper and Thomson Canadian Collection galleries in particular. The presence of the Ship Model Gallery proved to be easily missed from Level 1 - stairs went down to it, yet it felt separated from the rest of the building, and therefore got left off the wheely tour. We glanced through to the models as we passed by the Inuit Visible Storage area. The AGO's Walker Court spiral staircase and the ROM's Stair of Wonders formed a nice counterpoint.
The AGO has a far better stocked gift shop - and a mini-gift shop at Concourse level. I prefer how they've separated the front of their building ( Level 1 and Concourse ) so it can be accessed by the public for free, to visit the cafeteria, restaurant, and gift shops. The ROM's access to their similar eateries is a little more tricky.
I recently took my elderly mother on a wheelchair tour of the entire ROM - and the AGO ( on different days! ) - and both tours took about three and a half hours, stepping on the gas as much as I could. A great workout of muscle groups I don't usually use. I found both buildings logical enough to navigate.
The legacy of different ceiling heights in the ROM's east and west wings remains an irritant though. If I recall, there used to be a wheelchair system in the stairwell just near the Rotunda, but the Crystal galleries now have wheelchair elevators that require you to contact staff to operate. We didn't, since my Mother is able to use stairs, and she only had to change grade once that way. The Crystal is a logical solution to linking the heritage wings at the north end of the site - and creating a flow between the collections housed in them that the Terrace Galleries didn't.
There was more back-tracking and legwork to get through the smaller, more numerous AGO galleries - the Works on Paper and Thomson Canadian Collection galleries in particular. The presence of the Ship Model Gallery proved to be easily missed from Level 1 - stairs went down to it, yet it felt separated from the rest of the building, and therefore got left off the wheely tour. We glanced through to the models as we passed by the Inuit Visible Storage area. The AGO's Walker Court spiral staircase and the ROM's Stair of Wonders formed a nice counterpoint.
The AGO has a far better stocked gift shop - and a mini-gift shop at Concourse level. I prefer how they've separated the front of their building ( Level 1 and Concourse ) so it can be accessed by the public for free, to visit the cafeteria, restaurant, and gift shops. The ROM's access to their similar eateries is a little more tricky.
deerparker
Active Member
I really enjoyed the Gallery of Minerals too - more fascinating than I expected. The Unbuilt Toronto exhibit, however, was a complete disappointment.
jks
Continuous Lurker
Was it?? I really wanted to see that. Oh, well, I'm still gonna go this winter, the Minerals exhibit seems very interesting.
MetroMan
Senior Member
^ It was a small room with a bunch of posters on the walls. I thought there would be models or something more interesting. It was nothing that you couldn't find online for free.
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
I see that they've added seating areas to the Crystal Court, for visitors during the day. The Court sometimes functions as an extension - when the Samuel Hall Currelly Court lounge is rented out for private functions in the evenings - to make a considerably larger venue.
The AGO seems to have a different approach to creating versatile spaces. Their party room, on Level 3 of the Contemporary wing, is closed to the public and unused most days. One wonders whether it could have functioned as a shared space ( a member's lounge during the day, permitting the Grange to remain the Grange as we once knew it? ) instead.
The AGO seems to have a different approach to creating versatile spaces. Their party room, on Level 3 of the Contemporary wing, is closed to the public and unused most days. One wonders whether it could have functioned as a shared space ( a member's lounge during the day, permitting the Grange to remain the Grange as we once knew it? ) instead.
The book itself that triggered the (small) exhibition has far more to it. It's still worth looking at if you're interested in the topic. I thought the exhibition was a little skimpy too!
42
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
Went back for another look at the Minerals again today - such pretty colours and shapes. The Museum was packed, too.
Had a late lunch in Food Studio in the basement - not quite as good as the AGO's cafetorium, but more choices ... and three times more seating.
Had a late lunch in Food Studio in the basement - not quite as good as the AGO's cafetorium, but more choices ... and three times more seating.
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
The Museum is installing ramps to compensate for the differences in ceiling heights between the 1914 and 1933 wings. The first one is about to begin construction on Level 2, where the mammals in the Crystal are linked to the birdies in the 1914 wing.