My younger daughter was nearly three years old the first time we brought her to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and she enthusiastically explored all of the exhibits, indiscriminately interested in all of the displays. At one point, I heard her awed baby voice chirping up behind me, "Now, that's one BIG mother!" As I turned, I caught a couple of frowns on the faces of other moms (at, I suppose, the questionable language out of the mouth of a toddler) and, taking in the scene, I said, "Boy, that is big. But it's called a mummy." Reading the information plaque, I added, "And it's actually just a sarcophagus that was once used to hold a mummy…", and we were off to explore some more displays.
In celebration of the ROM's centennial, the museum has collaborated with the Walrus Foundation and the House of Anansi Press to create Every Object Has a Story. In this oversized art book, twenty-one interesting artifacts are presented: first by their various curators and then interpreted in poetry or prose by "extraordinary Canadians" and artfully photographed by (primarily) students of photography. Joseph Boyden respectfully interprets a Blackfoot war robe, Robert Bateman uses passenger pigeons to describe the evolution of his art, the museum, and ecological issues, and Sheree Fitch (a once hugely popular children's book author in our home) uses her gifts to do justice to Gordo the dinosaur. I was equally intrigued by a black opal ring, a stuffed rhinoceros, and an Inuit kayak -- turning the pages of this book was like a leisurely walk through the ROM with an expert guide.
I don't know if this book would have wide appeal but it certainly worked for me, as a lover of the ROM and museums in general. As I type this, my younger daughter, now 16, is on a plane to Europe to see some of the finest museums in the world; this kid who once went goggle-eyed at the sight of a painted sarcophagus (and who later begged us to return to the ROM to see the travelling displays of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Emperor Qin's Terracotta Army, and Ultimate Dinosaurs: Giants From Gondwana) is seriously planning to become a museum curator one day, thanks in no small part to the ROM.
