ROM Renames Curatorial Centre building for Mrs. Louise Hawley Stone
Her
transformative $50 million bequest from 1997 fuels major new acquisitions
for the galleries of Renaissance ROM.
(Toronto,
Ontario – June 27, 2006) It is with great pleasure that the Royal
Ontario Museum (ROM) announces that it will name its largest building the Louise
Hawley Stone Curatorial Centre in
honour of the late Mrs. Louise Hawley Stone. In her lifetime, Mrs. Stone
gave much of
herself
to the ROM, serving on its Board of Trustees and donating numerous
artifacts to various collections. Most notably, she established a sizeable
legacy in her will, ultimately transferring $49.7
million
(Cdn) to create the Louise Hawley Stone Charitable Trust—the largest
bequest ever received by a Canadian cultural institution upon her death in
1997. The Louise Hawley Stone Charitable
Trust
was established for the purpose of building and promoting the ROM’s
collections through ongoing acquisitions and publications.
In
honour of her extraordinarily generous gift and her lifelong devotion to
building and promoting the collections of the ROM, the nine-floor
Curatorial Centre, the Museum’s largest building and home to its
collections of nearly six million objects and specimens, will be known as
the Louise Hawley Stone Curatorial Centre. The building also houses
conservation, preparation and research facilities, curatorial and staff
offices, and the new Learning Centre featuring an Information
Centre/Library,
seven Learning Labs, and a newly designed state-of-the-art Digital
Gallery.
“The
ROM has always felt strongly that the Museum should express its gratitude
in a prominent and enduring fashion,” says the ROM’s Director and CEO,
William Thorsell. “The Louise Hawley Stone Curatorial Centre will always
stand for a woman whose leadership and philanthropy
transformed
the experience of the Museum for millions of future visitors, students and
scholars.”
100
Queen’s Park 416.586.8000
Toronto,
Ontario www.rom.on.ca
M5S
2C6 Louise
Hawley Stone Curatorial Centre Page 2 of 3
June
27, 2006 Since
the Louise Hawley Stone Charitable Trust came into existence, the Museum
has been able to compete
internationally
for major acquisitions and collections that will be showcased in current
and future galleries of Renaissance
ROM. Her legacy has benefited all
aspects of the Museum’s collections. Following the expansion, almost all
of the 27 galleries created in Renaissance ROM will feature new artifacts
brought to the Museum by virtue of the Stone Charitable Trust. Significant
acquisitions in areas such as minerals and gems, Asian arts, Canadian
First Peoples, textiles, and dinosaurs, have improved the Museum’s
holdings with star objects and major new collections, in some cases
lifting these collections to among the finest in the world.
Mrs.
Stone's support of the ROM spanned over 50 years. A collector of Asian art
and a student of Far Eastern studies, she served on the Museum's Board of
Trustees from 1968 to 1972. In 1960 she helped establish the Bishop White
Committee to raise funds for the Museum's Far Eastern Department. Later,
in 1994 she made possible the creation of the ROM's first fully endowed
curatorial chair, the Louise Hawley Stone Chair of Far Eastern Art,
currently held by Dr. Klaas Ruitenbeek. Mrs. Stone also donated Chinese
and English furniture, pewter, 1,000 textile artifacts, and completed the
funding to build the former galleries of Chinese art. The ROM presently
has more than 1,052 registered specimens in its collection thanks to
funding by the Louise
Hawley
Stone Charitable Trust, and Mrs. Stone’s lifelong devotion to the Royal
Ontario Museum.
Among
the outstanding acquisitions enabled by the Louise Hawley Stone Charitable
Trust is the Charles Key Canadian Mineral Collection, with thousands of
rare specimens, including more than 700 of the finest minerals of their
species ever found. Other mineral specimens acquired with the assistance
of the Trust include a 900 carat Cerussite gem—the largest faceted gem
of its kind in the world; new mineral collections from Namibia, Africa and
Mont St. Hilaire, Quebec; rare meteorites; and a 5.12 carat Burmese Ruby.
These specimens will
be
featured in the ROM’s future Inco Ltd. Gallery of Minerals, Gems and
Jewels.
Other
Stone-funded acquisitions include a 1.7 metre long, superbly preserved, 65
million year old Triceratops skull
from South Dakota; a 2.1 metre long, 420 million year old sea scorpion
fossil from New York, the
world's
largest assembled specimen of the largest Silurian sea predator; and a 6.1
metre long Ichthyosaur,
the largest in the ROM's collection, intended as the centerpiece of a
Mesozoic display of major marine predators.
These
specimens will be featured in the ROM’s new Jim and Louise Temerty
Galleries of the Age of Dinosaurs, scheduled to open mid-2007 on the
second level of the Michael Lee-Chin
Crystal. Also featured in
current
and future Renaissance ROM’s galleries: a marble statue of Roman goddess
Diana dating from the 1st century BC; a bronze Buddha sculpture from the
late 8th century; textiles and costume from the Paul Poiret collection in
Paris—a leading early 20th century fashion designer; several rare
Japanese handscroll paintings and screens from the 1800s; and nearly 300
Art Nouveau and Art Déco objects partly purchased through the Stone
Trust and partly donated from the collection of Bernard and Sylvia Ostry
of Toronto.
Publications
funded by the Louise Hawley Stone Charitable Trust include a series of
field guides to Ontario Birds, Minerals, and Wildflowers; exhibition
catalogues such as Déco
Lalique: Creator to Consumer, More Than Keeping Cool: Chinese Fans and Fan
Paintings, and The
Woodcuts of Naoko Matsubara;
archaeological research
studies
such as Journey to the Ice Age:
Discovering an Ancient World; and
collection monographs, such as High Louise
Hawley Stone Curatorial Centre Page 3 of 3 June 27, 2006
Style:
The Bernard and Sylvia Ostry Collection.
Many of these publications have gone on to win awards in their
respective
fields: Journey to the Ice Age, by
ROM curator emeritus Peter Storck, was the 2004 winner of several awards,
including the Canadian Historical Association’s Best Book on Ontario
History, the Alcuin Design
Award,
and the Champlain Society Chalmers Award.
In
addition to naming the Louise Hawley Stone Curatorial Centre, the ROM will
unveil a special new acquisitions display case dedicated to Mrs. Stone in
early 2007 in the newly refurbished Samuel
Hall Currelly
Gallery.
The ROM has also published a beautiful limited edition book and DVD on
Mrs. Stone’s life and legacy.
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The
Royal Ontario Museum (ROM)
is an agency of the Government of Ontario. Created in 1912, Canada’s
largest museum of
natural
history and world cultures has six million objects in its collections and
galleries showcasing art, archaeology and natural science.
Renaissance
ROM is an ambitious expansion and
heritage renovation project that will transform the Royal Ontario Museum
into one
of
North America's great museums and a leading cultural attraction for the
city, province and country. For more information, please visit www.rom.on.ca/renaissance
For 24-hour information in English and French, please call 416.586.8000
or visit the ROM’s web site at www.rom.on.ca
