Royal Ontario Museum celebrates 110-year anniversary with free admission all weekend

Admission to the Royal Ontario Museum is free this weekend as one of the province's most renowned cultural and educational institutions celebrates its 110th anniversary.

Doors will be open to the public on Saturday and Sunday, between 10 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.

While tickets aren't necessary, the museum says there may be wait times for entry due to the number of expected visitors and building capacity limits.

"What you can expect is to really enjoy the ROM, every bit of it, including our special exhibitions," said Kelly Harper, the ROM's vice-president of visitor experience.

"We want to make sure that when you come in, you have a great experience."

Those special exhibitions include Death: Life's Greatest Mystery, which explores the death rites and ceremonies of various cultures, and Wildlife Photographer of the Year, featuring a hundred of the best images from the annual international competition.

Visitors will also be able to view a skeleton of an ankylosaur called Zuul crurivastator, a horned and armoured dinosaur with a sledgehammer-like tail, which be on display until Sunday.

Stoney Creek residents Dave and Jessica Worsnop said they both remember visiting the museum on school trips when they were kids. This week, they brought their toddler first time.

"I think it's nice to have it free," Jessica Worsnop said. "Maybe it'll make people who weren't planning to come to come out."

Lorianne Woldehann, visiting Toronto from Florida this week, said she brought her family to the museum to learn more about Ontario.

"I think it's incredibly important for us to revisit our past," she said. "So we don't go backwards, but also it allows us to learn more from ourselves."

More than a century of ROM

The Ontario Legislature created the Royal Ontario Museum in 1912 with the signing of the ROM Act, according to the museum's website.

It officially opened its doors on March 19, 1914, in a newly-constructed building that today is the museum's west wing.

Originally, the museum comprised five different museums affiliated with the University of Toronto, but they were amalgamated into one in 1955 and separated from the university in 1968.

The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, a five-floor addition that was completed in 2007, added 56,000 square feet of new gallery space to ROM. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

Since then, the museum has been through a series of expansions and renovations, including the construction of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal that juts out over Toronto's Bloor Street, completed in 2007. The five-floor addition, inspired by the museum's gem and mineral collection, added more than 56,000 square feet of new gallery space to the historic venue, but its design divided critics.

Over the years, the museum has hosted memorable exhibitions, such as one on Egyptian art in the age of the pyramids and another featuring the skeleton and heart of a blue whale that washed ashore in western Newfoundland.

The museum has branched out in recent years, hosting a monthly, after-hours 19+ event called ROM After Dark featuring music, performances and food and drink.

Moments of controversy

The museum has not been without controversy, however.

In 2016, the deputy director apologized for a racist 1989 exhibit called Into the Heart of Africa that angered many in the city's Black community for its portrayal of African societies.

In November, the museum made changes to a part of the death exhibition made by Palestinian American artists in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, only reversing course after the artists protested.

A model of the Royal Ontario Museum's latest redesign is displayed during an announcement held by the institution in Toronto on Wednesday Feb. 14, 2024. (Nicole Thompson/The Canadian Press)

Shelley Butler, an anthropologist who has studied and worked with museums, said the ROM, like other museums in Western countries, has struggled to move away from its colonial past and shift its focus from objects to communities.

"That brings up all kinds of issues around accessibility, equity, who's reflected in the museum, who is silenced and so on," said Butler.

"These challenges are always ongoing as as communities change, demographics change, geopolitics change."

Last month, the ROM announced a three-year construction plan to transform the museum's main floor and Bloor Street entrance, expand its galleries and make its ground level exhibits free to visitors.

The Open ROM project aims to make the museum a cultural and civil hub that's more accessible to the public.

"A big part of what what we're focused on now is how as an organization ... we can help people really understand the past, make sense of the present and come together to shape a shared future," Harper said.