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ROM Colloquium

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building babel

Guest
All day long, on Friday February 9th, the ROM's curators present their latest research ( free admission ):

* Ten years fieldwork in northern China - World Cultures Dept.

* Pewter corrosion - Natural History Dept.

* 19th century silver designer Louis-Victor Freret - World Cultures Dept.

* DNA barcoding of mammals at the ROM - Natural History Dept.

* History of the ROM's Tibetan collection. - World Cultures Dept.

* In Tangled Silence: The Mystery of French River Rapids - World Cultures Dept.

* Genetic stuff about lizards! - Natural History Dept.

* Charles Rennie Mackintosh designs - Library and Archives.

* Depictions of Hell in China - World Cultures Dept.

* Sex, hawthorns and DNA - Natural history Dept.

* Why did the chicken cross the subcontinent? - Natural History Dept.

* Examination and analysis of the ROM's Chinese polychrome sculptures - Conservation Dept.

* Dinosaurs on the move - Natural History Dept.

* Fossils! - Natural History Dept.

* Bodhisattvas - World Cultures Dept.

* Excavations in ancient Peruvian states - World cultures Dept.

* Evolution of behaviour and morphology in neotropical sheath tailed bats - Natural History Dept.

* Zakariya al Qazwini's Compendium of Natural History - World Cultures Dept.

Lecture: A Tale of Two Tombs - Klaas Ruitenbeek, World Cultures Dept.

Location: The ROM's Signy and Cleophee Eaton Theatre.

Time: 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
 
SD2: Take the day off, let your hair down, and spend a scary Day At The Museum!
 
It was fun ... in parts.

There is so much more to the ROM than simply a museum, as all the research they are doing proves. Here are just a few of the talks:

Several of the natural history talks showed how DNA is providing evidence not available through traditional fields of research, such as geology. The talk on how the DNA of lizards has helped reconstruct the history of Baja California was one example. DNA "barcoding" of thousands of tissue samples kept in the ROM's deep freezers is another initiative.

The Burgess Shale talk suggests that the Earth and Life Sciences Gallery will have animations of what early creepy-crawly life forms looked like. We were shown Nemo-like animations from the Field Museum as an example - but ours will be better, apparently.

There was a talk about a French silversmith who was hired away from Britain, to encourage local craftsmen in the Montreal area, and how Minton in England reproduced some of the work he did while in Canada.

One curator had retraced Paul Kane's travels in the mid-19th century and corrected misidentified descriptions of locations for his paintings of the north. There were photographs of some of these places now, compared to the paintings.

Interesting talk about the ROM's large Tibetan paintings, suggesting they may have come from an imperial Chinese ( specifically, late Ching ) collection that had been disbursed.

Gory stuff about the evolution and depiction of hell in Chinese Buddhist art!

Analysis of paint pigments from 11th - 16th century Chinese polychrome wooden sculptures was done when the Bishop White Gallery was renovated, and the results showed how they were repainted over the years. Much talk of different pigments. I later asked the curator why only two of the triad of Bodhissatva's mentioned in her talk were on display and she said it was a decision made by the display artists, probably for reasons of available space.

A talk about how the ROM's dinosaurs have been displayed in several locations within the museum - starting off in the third floor of the original ( west ) wing and moving to the second floor of the east wing in 1932, then moved again in the 1970's. They can't figure out how the huge and heavy displays were moved in 1932. The "freestanding" dinosaurs are now being remounted in Beamsville, in their "Jurassic Parking Lot".

A talk about the research the ROM has done in Peru, excavating Wari and Inca sites.

Finally, Klaas Ruitenbeek's Vaughan Lecture about the ROM's Ming Tomb was a fascinating highlight to the day. It included plenty of photograhs of the site now ( it is now a junkyard, near where the Olympic Village will be! ), and such things as photogrammetric analysis of historical photographs of the tomb to get an idea of dimensions of the site. The family history of the general who was buried there was told, and an attempt at finally learning whether this is indeed his tomb - or that of another member of his family - was made ( still inconclusive! ).

Lunch at the Rotunda Cafe was okay. Not bad, not great. The same company will be running Crystal 5, the fancy resaurant upstairs in the Crystal that will open in a few months.
 
... and the "rumble" is worse than before: in addition to feeling the earth move and hearing the subway trains passing below, you now hear the decorative strips of wood they've added to the walls as part of the renovation ... vibrate!
 
Thanks for this summary. It sounds like a good day; too bad it was held on a Friday and would have been inaccessible to many (although perhaps they didn't have the capacity to handle many more).
 
People came and went throughout the day, natural history buffs and culture vultures washing in and out of the theatre in waves every fifteen minutes as the speakers changed.

To each their own - by the end of the talk on "Evolution of behaviour and morphology in Neotropical sheath-tailed bats" I was slumped in my seat, bleeding from the ears, my eyes rolled back in their sockets, slipping in and out of consciousness ...

Ruitenbeek flew in from Holland or somewhere to give his lecture.

The cute Burgess Shale guy was French and looked just like Tintin.
 
Time: Friday February 15th. 9 a.m. doors open.

Place: Signy & Cleophee Eaton Theatre in the basement of the ROM.

This years mini-talks ( which seem even zanier than usual! ) are as follows:

9:30 Ordovician Jellyfish - A Tale of Two Largerstatten.

9:45 Unmasking a Hidden Identity: A New York Chippendale Bureau Bookcase at the ROM.

10:00 Space Rocks: An Overview of the ROM's Meteorite Collection.

( 10:15 BREAK )

10:45 A Door Behind a Wall ( South Asian Arts and Culture ).

11:00 Environmental Assessment of Small Mammals at Bakhuis, Suriname.

11:15 Returning to Bhaja cave 19, Maharashtra, India ( Dept. of World Cultures ).

11:30 An Expedition to the ROM's Rotunda Marble Quarries, Bancroft, Ont.

( 11:45 LUNCH BREAK )

1:00 Pleistocene Stone Handaxes from Northern China and their Significance.

1:15 Abandoned Landing: The Lost Leg of the French Portage ( Dept. of World Cultures ).

1:30 Primitive Bat from the Early Eocene of Wyoming.

1:45 Are Nova Scotian and Newfoundland Populations of the Mississippian Spiriferid Brachiopod Martinia galataea Bell Really the Same?

( 2:00 BREAK )

2:30 Abdullah Kohal's Bead Sampler.

2:45 Minerals from Tsumeb, Namibia; the Charles Key Collection.

3:00 Neoclassical Silks: Originals or Re-Weaves? ( Textiles and Costumes ).

3:15 The Dakhleh Coffin: Life and Times.

4:00 Changing Views of Islamic Civilisation: Displaying the Islamic Collection of the ROM 1965 to 2008.

4:15 Using New Tools to Answer Old Questions: Nuclear Markers and the Tree of Life.

4:30 Transmission of Knowledge and Pragmatic Experimentation. The Village of Nsei, Cameroon as a Multisited Pottery Workshop.

4:45 Three Unpublished Sketchbooks of the Russo-Japanes War ( 1904-1905 ).

5:30

THE VAUGHAN LECTURE - THE DAWN OF ANIMAL LIFE REVISITED

Jean-Bernard Caron, Associate Curator ( Invertebrate Paleontology ), Dept. of Natural History.

The ROM and the Burgess Shale, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. One of the most important paleontological localities ever discovered, and intensively explored by teams from the ROM since 1975. The Museum's collections from the site are used for a host of studies.
 
Unfortunately, I missed the Jellyfish.

* Space Rocks rocked though - the ROM's collection has tripled in size over the past decade. The new gallery will have over three times more objects on display, and a 16 ft. long meteorite display with over a hundred items.

* The 'Door Behind a Wall' is on display in the new South Asian gallery.

* Bancroft marble quarries provided the materials used in the Rotunda - the sunburst central floor decoration, stairways, drinking fountain and columns - in the 1933 building. Archival photos of the quarries then and now, having been abandoned in the mid-1930's, were shown. Bancroft was also the source of the blue sodalite at the centre of the sunburst. About 130 tons of it were also shipped to London to decorate a building on Park Lane.

* Neoclassical Silks was an interesting talk about researching the authenticity and age of rare French silks prior to the ROM bidding at auction for them.

* The unusual Egyptian coffin decoration - "goofily" painted, from the Egyptian "boonies" according to the curator - was, apparently, the product of a carpenter rather than a traditional painter. It seems that, when the Persians invaded, they shipped all the best artists to work in Persepolis etc., leaving second-rate cheddingtonista talent to decorate their provincial coffins.

* For me, the talk about the various ways the Islamic collection has been displayed over time ( the 1966; 1969; 1982; 2008 galleries ) was the most fascinating one. The curator had been involved in all of them, and had some insights into the different approaches taken by curator-led and designer-led displays.

Gorged on free muffins, cookies and coffee at the breaks. Anyone who goes to the Colloquium can also slip into the Museum for free. Wandered over to the Japan Foundation exhibition at lunchtime and downed several glasses of Tropicana orange - the Japanes government always treats Toronto's general public so nicely. Then off to Eglinton St.George's United Church to hear Bach's St. Matthew Passion, with the Bach Consort, and two choirs, conducted by Yannick Nezet-Seguin. Sublime evening.
 
Here's the 2010 Colloquium: February 5, 9:15 am to 7:00 pm, Full Day

List of presentations:

On Healing Magic Again: A Dragon-Spouted Saucer Made of Nephrite
Karin Ruehrdanz, Curator, Department of World Cultures

Founder’s Fossil – Sir Edmund Walker and the Burgess Shale Connection
Dave Rudkin, Assistant Curator, Department of Natural History

Sustaining Ancestors. Architectural posts from Africa
Silvia Forni, Curator, Department of World Cultures

Illustrating Fashion: The Art Deco Designs of George Barbier
Arthur Smith, Head, Library & Archives

South American Safari: Adaptive Radiation of Bats in Savannas
Burton Lim, Assistant Curator, Department of Natural History

Investigating a Network of American Furniture Makers in Montreal ca. 1790-1820
Ross Fox, Associate Curator, Department of World Cultures

The Auto-fluorescence of Asian Lacquer
Marianne Webb, Senior Decorative Arts Conservator

LUNCH BREAK

Greenwich Garnitures in Relation to the Greenwich Anime of William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke, which is a Focal Point in our Arms and Armour Collection.
Corey Keeble, Curator, Department of World Cultures

Ragamala Paintings: Visualizing Music Through Paint
Deepali Dewan, Curator, Department of World Cultures

The Remarkable Geology of Killarney Provincial Park
Vince Vertolli, Assistant Curator, Department of Natural History

Coral, Rock, or Wood: A Reconsideration of the Iconography of a Motif in the East Wall of the ROM’s Pair of Chinese Daoist MuralsKa Bo Tsang, Assistant Curator, Department of World Cultures

Chasing the First Urban Dwellers: Work at Hamoukar, Northeastern Syria
Clemens Reichel, Associate Curator, Department of World Cultures

French Rapids
Ken Lister, Assistant Curator, Department of World Cultures

Oskenonton’s Canoes
Trudy Nicks, Department of World Cultures

Reflections of the First Emperor in the ROM Chinese Gallery
Chen Shen, Department of World Cultures

FEATURE EVENT: 2010 VAUGHN LECTURE:

New Directions in Dinosaur Research
David Evans, Associate Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology
 
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