[Rockhounds] Bob & Bonnie bat - (ROM review)

[Tim Jokela Jr.]

Funny the ROM should come up.

I visited it last week, to see the new refurbed exterior, the Darwin 
exhibit, and the paleo gallery. (No mineral gallery, sigh, it's supposedly 
coming this January.) Twenty bucks to get in was a bit of a surprise, but 
lunch was a very good pizza and parking was only fifteen bucks.

The Darwin exhibit was ok, but nothing really special. A one hour PBS 
special would teach you more about his life. It was cool to see his actual 
rock hammer and read his journal entries from the voyage of the Beagle. 
Terrible display space, poorly lit, small print labels, and they've paid no 
attention to sound quality. With tons of people, kids, multiple video 
screens, it seemed terribly noisy to me. The new architecture is worthless 
for displaying anything, all goofy triangular angles and whatnot. My buddy 
suggested the display was organized by an art major who didn't want any 
input from a scientist. Extremely annoying trying to find your way around 
the place with all the recent construction.

The paleo exhibit was about the same. They've got the priceless fossils to 
be sure, but we found unlabelled cases, switched labels, poor lighting, and 
again with the ridiculous architecture making for a confused, convoluted, 
impractical exhibit. Hidden little rooms, walls with weird angles, that sort 
of crap. The 2 meter NY eurypterid was worth the trip. Lots of insane stuff 
from the Green River and Germany; a fridge-sized fish from Kansas was 
amazing. A major disappointment was the lack of local material; I saw a 
single horn coral from Arkona, none of the wonderful Ontario Ordivician 
fossils. Not a single piece from the Burgess Shale. The new style of 
labelling is nuts; a case of 40 things all numbered, with the name and loc 
listed off to the side, numerically. An incredible Alberta ammonite, bright 
red, maybe 50cm across... no label! The bright spot was that more fossils 
will be coming, supposedly in '09 or '10, which is something to look forward 
to. The gallery at present is grand fun for kids, and those who don't care 
about what anything actually is. I guess the museum really is forced to 
cater to the utterly ignorant public, as in the four hours or so that we 
were there we didn't see anybody really looking at the labels or really 
studying anything, nose to glass. For advanced amateurs it's a mixture of 
depressing and infuriating.

So all in all a fun trip with a good buddy, but the modern style of museum 
exhibit is depressing. Typically Canadian sort of thing, a priceless and 
massive collection, but only a tiny fraction of it is on display, and it's 
displayed in a half-ass manner. Millions upon millions of dollars spent on 
modern architecture... when all that's needed to display stuff properly is 
nothing more complex than a big, square, well-lit room.

Lastly, if y'all want to get nationalistic and patriotic about the earth 
sciences... I want all of Canada's fossils back here in Canada. All the 
Alberta vertebrates and ammonites. All the tens of thousands of Burgess 
Shale specimens at the Smithsonian. All the incredible, absolutely one of a 
kind stuff collected by folks from Michigan out of the Devonian beds at 
Arkona. Oh, and all the fabulous minerals from Saint-Hilaire, and Francon, 
and the Yukon phosphates too. A lot of this stuff should never have been 
allowed across the border to begin with. See how nationalism cuts both ways?

Tim Jokela Jr., tjokela at execulink.com
http://www.ontariominerals.com



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brett Whitenack" <whitbre at sbcglobal.net>
To: <rockhounds at lists.drizzle.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 4:07 PM
Subject: RE: [Rockhounds] Bob & Bonnie Finney rare bat fossil


> Tim,
>
>  I haven't been to the ROM but I'll add it to my"To do list." We all have 
> one of those don't we?
>
>  "The fossil goes where the experts are"
>
>  I don't dispute that the ROM has very capable and learned experts but as 
> you point out, two of the four paleontologists are from the United States. 
> I think part of my issue is due to patriotism. Is there any reason the 
> Finney's contacted the ROM instead of a U.S. museum?