Red/Cyan glasses are needed for this post.
The Royal Ontario Museum(ROM), in downtown Toronto, is one of Canada’s best museums. it has a great number of artifacts from Canada’s history, as well as from different cultures across the world. On the occasions I visited the ROM I usually spent most of my time at those exhibits. My interests are more focused on Archaeology, but there are also geology, biodiversity, and paleontology exhibits. It’s a large enough museum that I don’t think you could see everything in a day.
It is worth going inside to get a feel of the museum, because the outside is incredibly ugly. Here’s the ROM, in a 2D picture.
In my opinion, The design might be fitting for a modern art museum, but not one that focuses on history and the natural world. Jagged, ultra-modern abstract edges don’t fit with the exhibits inside. The fact that the old museum structure is still visible makes it worse; it feels like the new section is a foreign object growing out of the old building.
Another picture of the exterior, 3D this time, taken by the main entrance.
I still hate the design, but when the original building is not visible, it isn’t as bad. That’s about the best compliment I can give the design.
The exhibits themselves are much better than the building, though. I have quite a few 3D photos, and will probably show more in a future post. For now, though, I’m focusing on the Greek/Roman area of the museum.
This is one of many busts on display- I don’t remember the specifics of this particular sculpture.
This picture is of a Mithraic relief from the Italy region in the the 2nd century. One of the uses I’ve found with 3D photography is to help the detail in sculptures like this stand out better.
The last photo is a model of the Athena Parthenos, the statue of Athena which was in the Parthanon. The original statue was lost over a millennium ago, and only descriptions survive. This model is at about a 1/10 scale.
Finally, in contrast to the exterior of the building, a 2D photo of the ROM’s rotunda ceiling, created in 1933. This ceiling does reflect the spirit of the ROM, at least to me.
Parallel Views 