A 21st-Century Museum

From Josh Basseches, ROM Director & CEO

In 2018, ROM unveiled its new Strategic Direction: a roadmap to becoming a quintessentially 21st-century Museum. A museum engaged with important contemporary issues. A museum where everyone, from all walks of life, feels seen—and welcome.

Today, almost five years into our 10-year Strategic Direction, we are closer to this aspiration than ever.

On May 6, the day of King Charles's Coronation, we partnered with the Ontario government to open the entire Museum to the public for free. A staggering 17,277 visitors came through our doors that day, making it one of the most-attended—if not the most-attended—day in ROM's history. They roamed across all four floors, with many of them stopping into our summer blockbuster, T.rex: The Ultimate Predator. If nothing else, this day was proof of ROM’s huge appeal, inspiring even greater confidence in our plan, mapped out in the Strategic Direction, to become an ever more open, inclusive institution. This plan includes Free Main Floor, which returned on July 2 after last summer’s successful pilot that welcomed thousands of first-time visitors to ROM.

We can also see the fruits of the Strategic Direction in our three latest exhibitions.

Being and Belonging: Contemporary Women Artists from the Islamic World and Beyond confronts some of the most urgent contemporary issues of our time, from patriarchy and rigid social norms to war and political unrest. And it does so by foregrounding voices of women with deep ties to the Islamic world—voices that, for too long, have gone largely unheard in galleries and museums.

TUSARNITUT! Music Born of the Cold, which comes to us from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, explores the stunning breadth of Inuit musical expression, from drum dancing to throat singing. It is also a manifestation of our commitment to ensuring ROM is a place where Indigenous peoples have a full sense of belonging.

Noelle Hamlyn: Lifers, a new art installation, uses repurposed and retailored lifejackets to confront the destructive impacts of fast fashion. While focused on Hamlyn’s artistic vision, the exhibition benefits from contributions by Dr. Soren Brothers, ROM’s inaugural Allan & Helaine Shiff Curator of Climate Change, who helped develop a wall-spanning chronicle of the story of clothes from the factory to the landfill.

Each of these exhibitions alone breaks new ground. But, combined, they represent something deeper and even more powerful: a museum in metamorphosis, more vital than ever before.