Once upon a time, I worked at Canada's second largest museum, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. I worked there over seven years in several front-line capacities from Membership and Visitor Services to Education animation of blockbuster exhibits. Prior to that, I volunteered there in Vertebrate Palaeontology and as a co-op student in the Outreach Department. I also did some contract communications work in New Media. As a kid, I went to ROM camp and spent many a Saturday and Sunday afternoon noodling about. Now, I haven't worked at the ROM since 2005, and while I have friends who still do, and sometimes they talk to me about the state of the museum, I am certainly not current. That said, my opinions about the Museum are based in lived experience as part of the ROM family as much as my academic background.
When I read the Toronto Star article about the ROM's new CEO, Joshua Basseches, written by Martin Knelman, two things struck me. Firstly, Janet Carding, the ROM's former CEO, is given no credit for anything. She came in after William Thorsell's overlong tenure, and found herself heading up a demoralised workforce and a museum in the midst of an identity crisis, brought about largely by the newly opened and controversial Crystal. Under Carding's watch, the ROM developed an exceptional social media presence, influenced at least in part by her regular attendance in the galleries, watching and interacting. Knelman doesn't seem to understand that the exhibition schedule of this year and last, which he acknowledges for numbers and buzz, were set by her, whereas her first two years at the ROM were under the programming theme dictated by Thorsell. Carding's forward thinking and vision was stymied by the previous Board direction and executive, which was also a reflection of the years under Thorsell. During her time at the Museum, that Board dramatically turned around under new leadership. Basseches is inheriting a ROM that is a far cry from the monument to a questionable architectural vision and CEO's hubris to which Carding arrived.
The other thing that bothers me in this article is that the author refers to the Rotunda as "gloomy". It most certainly isn't, but it has lost its purpose and is woefully under used. Does Knelman remember the bright, vibrant space it was when it was the ROM's entrance? It once teemed with life, laughter, flowers, meetings, partings, and expressions of awe. That it seems gloomy now speaks to the entrance that was returned to Bloor St when the Crystal was built. I spent a lot of hours meeting and greeting people in the Rotunda, and it was many things, but never gloomy.
My compaints with the article end here. For the most part I am cautiously optimistic. The ROM is, at its best, a beacon to curiosity, engagement, and imagination. The ROM staff and volunteers work incredibly hard to make the Museum a place of wonder and enjoyment. The collections are among some of the best in the world, and it's curatorial departments breed excellence in scholarship. At its worst, and in my opinion, largely due to the ill-conceived architectural monstrocity that is the Crystal, the ROM is an unfriendly, exhausting magnum opus to elitism and pretention. The floors and walls are angled, the white walls harsh, the flow of traffic illogical, and everything is custom sized and therefore expensive to repair and replace. The Crystal set back museum architectural theory by 40 years. The Crystal's effective and intended uses (for instance the restaurant C5) didn't even last a decade, when public buildings usually have a lifespan of 20 to 30 years. So, yes, Basseches has his work cut out for him.
If I have any words of advice for the incoming CEO, I suggest he establish an open, transparent dialogue with the ROM staff - at every level - immediately. The institutional memory is a long one; many staff have been there for 30+ years and they have experienced several dissonant and conflicting leadership and pedagogical philosophies in a relatively short timeframe. Build trust, don't pander, and offer respect to a diverse group of educated, dedicated, professionals, Mr. Basseches, and you will have a loyal, profoundly grateful staff to return a gem of a museum to its rightful place as a paragon of culture, learning, emotional and intellectual engagement, entertainment, and scholarship. You do that, and the people of Toronto will return in droves and, I believe, forgive the sins of past leadership.
