Thursday, January 05, 2012

A Day at the Museum

We had a holiday on the 2nd, so I took the opportunity to check out the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). It has a huge collection of artifacts and you really can't cover it in one day, especially if you want to read all the descriptions. I only managed to cover it by skipping the instructions, and that took me nearly 8 hours. They also having a special exhibition on the Maya these days, which was the only one I read through. Unfortunately they didn't allow to take photos in that section. 

There is a great difference between the ROM and the our museum in Colombo. Not in terms of the Quality and the Quantity of artifacts, but in terms of number of visitors. These guys know how to get people to visit it. The place was packed on the holiday, especially since they are offering discounted tickets during the season. Truthfully, I haven't gone to our museum in a long time, and there wasn't many people those days. Maybe things have picked up now. It's just that it doesn't have a very inviting feeling. They should really do some marketing and encourage people to visit it. The museum has a web site, but needs improvement. There are a lot of missing image all over the site. Anyways, I must make a visit once I'm back. 

Here are pics of some artifacts. This is just a very small amount of what they have. I think you'll probably need to spend about a week or two to do a thorough examination of all of the items.





Chinese statues

Chinese statues

Chinese statues

Chinese statues

Chinese statues

Chinese statues

Chinese statues

Chinese statues

Chinese statues

Chinese statues

Chinese statues

Birds, form the Natural history section. These are models of birds, in a collection of about 100+, with descriptions. The natural history section has a vast collection of models of animals, birds, fish, insects etc. 

Dino bones, the one i was looking forward to. They have a big collection of Dino bones. The skeletons seen are not made up entirely of fossils. They use available fossils and create the rest of the skeleton. In the descriptions provided it is clearly shown which parts are real fossils and which parts are reconstructed. 

Dino bones

Dino bones. 

Dino bones

Dino bones

Dino bones. 

Dino bones

Dino bones. Brontosaurus head. The whole skeleton spans the whole room. You can't get it in one frame.

Dino bones. Baby Brontosaurus 

Allosaurus

Skulls of prehistoric bad-asses. At the near end are two Crocodile/Alligator skulls, followed by a saber toothed carnivore and Bison skills at the far end.

Mammoth skeleton

Prehistoric Moose-like creature

Prehistoric monkey

Saber toothed Tiger

Another Prehistoric bad-ass

Prehistoric Armadillo like creature

T-Rex skull

Triceratops skull

T-Rex skeleton

A coffin from Ghana shaped like a fish. 

Another Ghanaian coffin in the shape of a Mercedes 

African masks

South American headdress 

South American headdress 

Carvings

Armour suite from ancient middle-east

A model of a building

Decorated spoons from Europe

Figurines from Europe

A European dollhouse. The detail on it is amazing.

Collection of paperwieghts

Figurines from Europe

A vase from Europe

Sculptures from Europe

Egyptian fresco 

Egyptian pottery

A lid of a sarcophagus 

Egyptian fresco

Mummy

Busts from Greek era

Busts from Greek era

Greek pottery

Greek sculptures

Greek or Roman (I forget which) pottery

Greek or Roman (I forget which) pottery

Greek or Roman (I forget which) pottery

This is a Sapphire from Sri Lanka, called the "Star of Sri Lanka"

This is another artifact from Sri Lanka. A balustrade from the Kandyan era.


There are some more on my Flickr

1 comment:

ηiRσ said...

Wow... security must be pretty tight in there. Those things must be worth a fortune!