Alum Is Revitalizing Canada’s Largest Museum
The Royal Ontario Museum has over 1.2 million visitors a year, 40 galleries, and 18 million artworks, artifacts, and specimens. Photo courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum
Revitalizing Canada’s Largest Museum
Alum Josh Basseches leads Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum into a new era
It’s easy to identify what thrills Josh Basseches when he tours me through the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto: everything.
On the main floor, we pass a stunning yellow sari made from silk with copper alloy metallic threads. “We have one of the largest sari collections outside India,” says Basseches (GRS’11), the museum’s CEO for eight years. He points to a porcelain sculpture of Buddha, circa the 14th century. “Some people don’t realize the breadth and depth of collections we have here,” he adds with a glint in his eyes, gesturing from object to object. “Can you tell I get excited by this stuff?”
Brimming with more than 40 galleries and housing more than 18 million artworks, artifacts, and specimens, the ROM (as it’s known) is the largest museum in Canada. More than 1.2 million people visit each year. It’s also well known for its striking Bloor Street West façade—a “crystal” structure designed by the celebrated architect Daniel Libeskind. Managing all the moving parts of this massive institution is a time-consuming challenge, especially with a major renovation project on the horizon.
Basseches, who is pursuing a PhD in the history of art and architecture at BU’s College of Arts & Sciences, shows me the interior space near the café where the sloped floor will be leveled and transformed into 20,000 square feet of space for talks, music, dance, and hands-on activities. “We don’t want this to be just a pass-through space,” he says. “We want it to function, in some ways, like the city’s living room—a gathering space that will be flooded with natural light.”
The $96 million renovation, dubbed OpenROM, also includes a water feature wrapping around the front façade that shifts from burbling water in the summer to cracked ice in the winter, an oculus cut into the ceiling to give visitors a view up into the dinosaur gallery, and a massive lily pad staircase designed to weave together the museum’s three levels. It’s scheduled for completion in 2027.
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