Today's ad features your stereotypical 1950s architectural professional: trenchcoat, tie, hat (preferably a fedora), and a fistful of building plans. The building this dapper construction supervisor is depicted next to would quickly become one of St. Clair Avenue's architectural landmarks. Pigott Construction was based in Hamilton, where company president Joseph Pigott contributed heavily to the community as a president or board member of institutions such as McMaster University and the Art Gallery of Hamilton.......

It's been thirteen years now since the Royal Ontario Museum's McLaughlin Planetarium was shut down. The utilitarian building––half a dome unceremoniously shoved on top of a rectangular prism––was, until recently, all but forgotten, obscured by construction offices for the extremely un-utilitarian Crystal being built around the corner. When those construction offices moved out in December, however, leaving a mass of wide open space that hadn't been wide open for several years, the Planetarium quietly......

As part of the TTC's subway revitalization project, Museum subway station has been undergoing renovations under the direction of architects Diamond and Schmitt. The redesign of the station [hotly-contested by some––Ed.] is themed after Egyptian antiquities in the Royal Ontario Museum above, with hieroglyphics decorating the giant lettering and castings of artifacts wrapped around the columns to form a hall of caryatids. After five months of renovations the first glimpses of the finished design......

In Tuesday's news round-up, we told you that the plan to sell McDonald's the land at Bloor and Avenue had been halted until January 18. It's a good thing, too, as there are many questions that must be answered before the $3.38 million sale is finalized. Is it in the best interest for Toronto taxpayers? Is the sale a smart corrective action to the bungled 1971 lease agreement or another dumb move we'll regret for......

On Thursday evening, Torontoist broke the news that Wednesday's bomb threat at the Royal Ontario Museum was OCAD student Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson's final project for an advanced video class. Inspired by Marcel Duchamp's readymades (like Fountain, pictured above), Jonsson told us that the piece was about recontextualization, the idea that context changes art's meaning; in this case, something that is, he said, "quite clearly not dangerous, but when you put it in a different......

Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson has, as he put it to Torontoist in a phone interview earlier today, "seen better days." The Integrated Media OCAD student and his final project for his advanced video class are the direct cause––intended or not––for yesterday's bomb scare at the Royal Ontario Museum, and, a day later, Jonsson is now suspended from OCAD and is wanted for questioning by police. Inspired by Marcel Duchamp's readymades pieces (the most famous of......

Photo by David Topping. A mysterious bag discovered in an alleyway beside the Royal Ontario Museum at about 7:00 p.m. tonight has shut down all traffic––pedestrian and vehicular––on Bloor between St. George and University and on Queen's Park southbound from Bloor and Harbord. UPDATE (10:45 p.m.): CTV is now saying that police have found "what appears to be a pipe bomb," and that the building was (half-)evacuated (contrary to what we were originally told).......

Urbanist is a photo series that will look at developments, architecture, trends and activities happening in various cities––including our own––to inspire the urbane urbanist at home to make Toronto a better place. While Toronto has been making headlines in recent years for its investment in artistic institutions such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, Royal Ontario Museum, and the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, Ottawa has been in the spotlight of late because......

Photo by End User from the Torontoist Flickr Pool Last night, under the futuristic angles of the Royal Ontario Museum Crystal, over 2000 people gathered to do battle with glowing cardboard tubes in an epic lightsaber battle organized by Newmindspace. The evening was a huge success, attracting hundreds of curious, incredulous or plain baffled onlookers. More images after the jump.......

This Friday, November 16, we (Newmindspace) will be hosting our very first lightsaber battle! This summer at Burning Man, we witnessed a 10,000-person lightsaber battle put on by a camp called Watto's Junkyard, easily the largest lightsaber battle since the Jedi Civil War. However, with our limited resources, we realized that without a large donation from a rich weirdo (which are plentiful in San Francisco), we would probably not be able to get the......

The Royal Ontario Museum didn’t know what to expect when it began organizing its new exhibit, Canada Collects: Treasures from Across the Nation (October 6–January 6). Where usually a curator arranges carefully selected artifacts into an intellectual framework that brings out their larger meaning, for this exhibit, the ROM invited institutions and private collectors from across the country to contribute an object of their own choosing. With over 70 items from 50 contributing institutions......

Photo by Word Freak So, the shortlist for the Giller Prize is out. And whether you think it's rigged or based on talent, we still have to wonder: who's it going to be? Aside from that, the 28th International Festival of Authors officially kicks off tomorrow evening with a PEN Canada benefit event, featuring Margaret Atwood in conversation with Ian Rankin. And if you don't have any tickets, well, you're out of luck, as......

From October 1–4, the Walk21 conference comes to Toronto. Keynote speaker Dr. David Suzuki will be joined by a host of academics, urban planners, elected officials and activists to discuss urban pedestrian issues. Lectures, discussions and workshops will cover the theme of “putting pedestrians first” in policies and infrastructure in order to make active transportation viable and attractive in increasingly dense urban areas. Running concurrent to Walk21, the YWALK youth forum is aimed at......

The Toronto Public Library is the only good thing to have come from amalgamation. One of the worst things to have come from amalgamation, on the other hand, is City Council's insistence that everything that it doesn't do is a result of not being able to afford to do it, and that everything that it does do is a result of not being able to afford not to do it. Last Wednesday morning, June......

A museum of ceramics may not be everyone's cup of tea [rimshot], but the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art is one of Toronto's favourite buildings. Garnering an unprecedented positive rating of 81.5%, the structure took top honours in the third annual Pug Awards, which were announced today. The Pug Awards, despite their frustrating website, had Torontonians vote on 22 new buildings with a simple thumbs-up, thumbs-down rating. 40,000 votes later, the brilliant Gardiner came......

We've been watching the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal forming around the ROM since construction began in May of 2003, and now Torontoist is pleased to be the first media outlet to bring you photos of the nearly-finished interior. Read-on to see if all the fuss was worth it and to learn more about this extraordinary building.......

As noted in today's Daily Photoist, it's a big week for the Royal Ontario Museum, with the public unveiling of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal days away. Will any of the displays added to the new galleries over the next year wrest the claim of "most unusual exhibition" title from today's ad? Probably, since Animals in Art's claim appears to be hanging artwork in the ROM instead of, say, the Art Gallery of Ontario. The......

David Lynch, man! David Lynch, man! Does whatever David Lynch can! Spins a tale, any size, Confuses viewers, just like flies! Look out! Here comes David Lynch, man! Is he strong? Listen bud — He's got radioactive blood. Actually, wait, that last bit might not be true, but for some reason we keep thinking of that TV theme...no idea why. This week people are going crazy in Toronto queuing up to see the latest massive......

So, this week's most noteworthy film featuring a horrible zombie is obviously Fido, considering it’s Canadian and stuff, but we’ve talked about it more than enough, so in this week’s column we’ll make do with the next best thing—the horrible freaky visage of Cillian Murphy! Well, we think he’s scary looking, anyway. To think he was in 28 Days Later...playing a human! The Wind that Shakes the Barley, which stars the aforementioned Murphy, has done......

Though you’ll have to hold your herrerasaurs for the long-awaited (and belated) revamping of the Royal Ontario Museum, this weekend the ROM opened a new exhibition on the ancient Peruvian Sicán culture. Ancient Peru Unearthed: Golden Treasures of a Lost Civilization explores the lesser known pre-Incan society via artefacts from a recent major dig at the Batán Grande archaeological site. The items in this show are visually stunning, largely because (as the title implies)......

The 7th annual Planet in Focus International Film and Video Festival starts tonight at the Royal Ontario Museum, 7pm with a screening of Grant McLean’s 1953 short Farewell Oak Street before feature Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox, Sara Lamm’s documentary on the strange Dr. Emmanuel Bronner, a gentleman who (quite absurdly) escaped a psychiatric hospital and began a all-natural all-organic soap company. The festival continues until Sunday, closing with Conflict Tiger at Innis College, a documentary......

Let’s start with the film festivals for a change, huh? Most intriguing has to be the Toronto International Latin Film Festival, because it’s… on at the Royal Cinema? Que El? It’s interesting to see the old girl is in use again; until now we haven’t heard anything about it, and don’t even know if it’s been renovated yet. Maybe? The film festival starts tonight at 7pm with the Chilean film For Rent, and runs until......

As part of Toronto’s Live With Culture initiative, an all-night party to celebrate contemporary art is scheduled to start this year on September 30 at 7:00pm and end on October 1 at 7:00am. The event is called the Scotiabank Nuit Blanche and is modeled after an annual Parisian festival that began in October of 2002 and has already spread to other cities such as Brussels, Rome, and Madrid. Private and public buildings will be......

The Royal Ontario Museum has acquired 2,000 dead birds just in time for March Break visitors. These birds are victims of the Fall 2005 migration, killed by colliding with Toronto’s human-built structures. In attempt to minimize the death toll, FLAP (Fatal Light Awareness Program) has worked with the City of Toronto to develop a new migratory protection policy, which is the first of its kind worldwide. In addition to a public awareness campaign called......

Scheduled to be completed in 2005, Daniel Libeskind's crystalline redesign of the Royal Ontario Museum begins to show progress. The $94 Million (USD) budgeted design (loved by some, hated by others) features a huge glass canopy of crystal that will extend over an indoor park space on the Bloor Street side of the building. One interesting aspect of the design for the crystal ROM, is that it leans out from the property, over the......