World Culture Galleries
Sigmund Samuel Gallery of Canada
Level 1, Weston Family Wing
This spacious, light-filled new gallery showcases the country’s best collection of early Canadiana in a non-linear fashion. The gallery’s loft-like, open design allows visitors to move freely around the 882 square-metre (9,500 square-foot) space according to their own personal interests. Symbols, emblems and images of Canada, and what they suggest about changing ideas of Canadian "identities", play a key role in this vibrant permanent gallery. The contributions of successive generations of immigrants are also underscored.
The ROM’s Canadian collection is richest in the historical decorative and pictorial arts, while including historical artifacts, church sculpture and modern design, among others. The approximately 560 artifacts on display in the Sigmund Samuel Gallery of Canada are organized into sections that reflect both the strengths and weaknesses of the collection in striving for a better understanding of the past, however elusive. The displays are focused on landscapes, portraits, marine paintings, and the different decorative arts: furniture, silver, ceramics and glass. They provide narrow windows which disclose selected aspects of early Canadian social, economic, political, ethnic, religious, and personal history.
Highlights include a 19th-century wine cellaret with carved beaver and maple leaf motifs, contemporary Canadian artist Jin-Me Yoon’s thought-provoking Souvenirs of Self, a large chromogenic print on Plexiglas, and the historical painting of The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West (1776 with studio assistants; retouched in 1806). The displays in the main room of the gallery cover the period from the early years of European settlement to the beginnings of the modern industrial era, and reflect mainly the French and British cultural heritage of Canada.
The Wilson Canadian Heritage Room provides a dedicated space for changing exhibitions in the Sigmund Samuel Gallery of Canada. Currently on display is Stitching Community: African Canadian Quilts From Southern Ontario, an exhibition of quilts made from 1848 to 1976 exploring the role of African Canadian women.
The restored Sigmund Samuel Gallery of Canada is located south of the ROM’s beautiful historic Rotunda, and together with the Daphne Cockwell Gallery of Canada: First Peoples to the north, completes the Canadian Suite of galleries on the main floor of the Museum.
Podcasts
Iconic Cleopatra
March 19, 2009
This granite bust is most likely a representation of one of history's most famous women Cleopatra and is on display in the Galleries of Africa: Egypt. An iconic object in the ROM's collection, only three pieces of Ptolemaic sculpture like this exist in the world today.
Video Podcast (18.2MB, 2m 38s)
Written Transcript (PDF)
Returned to Former Splendour: Painting, Conservation & Dyes
January 13, 2009
Heidi Sobol, Senior Paintings Conservator, offers a peek at the exhibition Returned to Former Splendour which explores the conservation process involved in preparing the historical paintings now on display in the Wilson Canadian Heritage Exhibition Room in the Sigmund Samuel Gallery of Canada.
Video Podcast (9.6MB, 10m 57s)
Written Transcript (PDF)
