From China to Canada — Untold Stories of the ROM's Chinese Art Collection
Three curators reveal how Toronto acquired one of the world's most significant Chinese art collections through early 20th-century colonial networks.
Why we picked this
How did Toronto end up with one of the world's great Chinese art collections? The answer involves colonial networks, a British antiques dealer, and ambitions that raise uncomfortable questions.
The Royal Ontario Museum holds one of the world’s most significant collections of Chinese art, and the story of how it got there is more complicated than most visitors realize. Three curators — including ROM’s Louise Hawley Stone Chair of East Asian Art and the Philadelphia Museum’s curator of Chinese art — trace the early 20th-century partnership between ROM’s founding director and a British antique dealer who set out to build “the greatest Chinese collection” in Toronto.
It’s a story about colonial networks, institutional ambition, and questions about cultural heritage that museums everywhere are still grappling with. Free at the ROM.