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Renaissance ROM Campaign Receives $12 Million Gift from Robert Schad and Family

Campaign’s third-largest single private donation will establish the Schad Family Gallery of Life in Crisis

The Honourable Hilary Weston and Mr. Robert Schad.	Mr. Robert Schad speaks at the podium.	The Honourable Mike Colle, Ontario Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, and Mr. Robert Schad with a Harris Hawk.

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) announces a new major gift to its Renaissance ROM expansion and renovation project from Robert Schad and family. This remarkable $12 million gift will be used to establish the Schad Family Gallery of Life in Crisis in the historic buildings of the Museum. The new gallery, devoted to the diversity of life on earth and significant challenges to its conservation and survival, will open in early 2009 as a central piece of the ROM’s $25 million initiative to create a new National Biodiversity and Conservation Centre.

'We’re thrilled to receive this transformative gift from Robert Schad and his family to expand our natural history research, galleries and programs,' said William Thorsell, ROM Director and CEO. “With this gift, we will realize a long-held dream to establish a major new international destination for biodiversity at the ROM—one that dramatically enhances our extensive world-wide research programs with a major new gallery, public and educational programs, and publications focused on conservation, on species survival and restoration, on fragile ecosystems, and what we as individuals can and must do to protect these essential biological assets that sustain life on this planet.”

The Schad Family Gallery of Life in Crisis at the ROM will be developed in parallel to a new exhibit at the Earth Rangers Centre in Vaughan, Ontario, focused on solutions to the biodiversity crisis. Together, the ROM Gallery and Earth Rangers exhibit and related joint programs will provide a comprehensive picture of the vast extent of life’s diversity, the processes which drive speciation, and the significant threats and challenges to biodiversity, as well as individual actions and solutions.

'By establishing this new gallery and its programs at the ROM, I hope that we can reach out to millions of children and adults and touch their lives with a powerful, simple and ultimately hopeful message on the importance of biodiversity, how threatened it is currently, and what they can do today and tomorrow to preserve it,' said Robert Schad.

Robert Schad is the founder and chairman of Earth Rangers, a partnership-driven environmental charity established in 1999. Its mission is to inspire children with a lasting passion to build a better future by leveraging the affinity that young people have with wildlife and the environment to develop leadership and citizenship skills. Mr. Schad is also the founder and a Director of Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd., the world's largest brand name supplier of injection molding equipment and services to the plastics industry, involved in the manufacture of a wide range of plastic products for the food, beverage, automotive, and consumer electronic industries.

The Schads’ $12 million gift will be used not only to develop and install the new gallery on Level 2 of the ROM’s Centre Block, but also to create a gallery endowment fund supporting ongoing gallery development and public programs, as well as to conduct related scientific research by the ROM’s internationally known curators and associates in the National Biodiversity and Conservation Centre.

Featuring the ROM’s extensive collections and specimens, the 10,000 square-foot Schad Family Gallery of Life in Crisis will have four major components: Life Is Diverse, Life Evolves, Life Is In Crisis, and the Earth Rangers Studio - an innovative, flexible classroom and studio for lectures, discussions and educational programs, wired for broadcast capability. Strongly oriented towards the facts and challenges of biodiversity in crisis, the Schad Family Gallery will also offer optimistic solutions and actions that individuals may take.

With this generous contribution, the third-largest private donation received to date by the Renaissance ROM Campaign, the Museum welcomes Robert Schad and Family to the New Century Founders, a special category of Renaissance ROM donors who have given $5 million and higher, now comprising ten members. The New Century Founders will be recognized in the Spirit House within the new Michael Lee-Chin Crystal as the primary individuals leading the redevelopment of the ROM for the 21st century.

'Robert Schad is an outstanding philanthropist, a great example of the kind of person who can help provide the private sector support that is vital to the long term success of the ROM and our other cultural institutions,' said Minister of Culture Caroline Di Cocco. 'I am very proud of the initiative the Ontario Government took to get Toronto’s Cultural Renaissance going, with investments that included $42 million in the ROM alone. Now we are seeing our dreams come to fruition, with a rebirth of philanthropy and the private sector coming to the plate to ensure that our cultural future remains bright.

'Mr. Schad also deserves praise for interest in Ontario’s biodiversity. His donation will result in a great educational exhibit which will support our government’s policy designed to preserve the biodiversity of our province.'

To date, the Renaissance ROM Campaign has raised $238 million in total, which includes $213 million of the total $250 million capital construction costs, plus $25 million for related program and endowment priorities. (For more details and a list of recent important gifts to the Campaign, please see the news release 'Renaissance ROM Campaign reaches $238 Million' at www.rom.on.ca/news/releases/index.php

The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, the new wing of the Museum designed by Daniel Libeskind as the centrepiece of the Renaissance ROM project, is now under construction and will have its public Architectural Opening and Building Dedication on June 2, 2007.

 

 

Issue date:
November 7, 2006

For more information:
Media Relations
Tel.: 416.586.5547
Fax: 416.586.8022
E-mail: media@rom.on.ca

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