Royal Ontario Museum

Frommer's Review

This is one of my favorite museums anywhere. The ROM (rhymes with "tom"), as it's affectionately called, is Canada's largest museum, with more than six million objects in its collections. And in 2008, many of those pieces will be back on display as the museum's ambitious renovation plan winds up. The C$200-million project has added six new galleries overlooking Bloor Street West. Called the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal -- after the generous donor who pledged C$30 million to build it -- the galleries are encased inside an übermodern palace of jutting crystal prisms designed by Daniel Libeskind. Personally, the design plan brought to mind Superman's crystal palace at the North Pole, but now that the building is complete I have to admit that the spectacular crystal changes the face of Bloor Street West. (At press time, the ROM was busily moving its World Culture and Natural World galleries into the crystal.)

Some of the ROM's best galleries have already reopened. These include T. T. Tsui Gallery of Chinese Art, the Gallery of Korea, and the Bishop White Gallery of Chinese Temple Art (my personal favorite -- see "Serenity Now"). At the same time, the new Gallery of Canada's First Peoples has been unveiled, as has the A.G. Leventis Foundation Gallery of Ancient Cyprus.

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