ROM Announces Featured 2023 Exhibitions

FILE: Royal Ontario Museum in Fall 2021. (Photo By Maksim Sokolov (Maxergon)/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)

TORONTO, December 12, 2022 – ROM (Royal Ontario Museum), one of the world’s foremost cultural institutions, today reveals a wide-ranging slate of new exhibitions for 2023. Featuring programming targeting all ages and interests, highlights include an exhilarating and interactive encounter with the king of the tyrant dinosaurs, a provocative exploration of our natural and cultural responses to death, and a conversation on the critical issues of our time from the perspective of women artists from or connected to the broader Islamic world.

T.rex: The Ultimate Predator
March 11, 2023 – September 4, 2023
Stalking in the imagination of every child is the great T. rex, the tyrant lizard king of dinosaurs. In T. rex: The Ultimate Predator, this culturally omnipresent dino returns to life in a spectacular new exhibition featuring more than 40 models and casts, many full-sized, for visitors to feast on.  Illustrating the latest scientific research and discoveries with interactive displays, multisensory activities, and more, visitors will meet the tyrannosaur superfamily and examine how they became the most fearsome carnivores of the Mesozoic Era. This exhibition is presented by Desjardins.
Tickets Details: General admission + surcharge of $8.00 CAD/adult

Music Born of the Cold: Inuit Art, Dance & Song
May 6, 2023 – September 17, 2023
Music Born of the Cold invites visitors to discover the breadth and diversity of Inuit musical expression and examine the connections between Inuit visual arts and two prominent musical genres: drum dancing and throat singing. Presenting over one hundred sculptures, prints, drawings and installations themed around music from the 1950s to the present, the exhibition reveals, from a circumpolar perspective, a transhistorical exploration of the fundamental role music plays in Inuit life, while providing a rare opportunity to appreciate differences in style and content among artists and regions.
Ticket Details: Included with general admission

Lifers: An Art Installation by Noelle Hamlyn (working title)
June 3, 2023 – February 19, 2024
This immersive art installation by Canadian visual artist Noelle Hamlyn features over 20 repurposed and retailored lifejackets created from fashion garments. Using the visual metaphor of the lifejacket (or “lifer”), it opens a complex and important conversation about climate change, and how fast fashion, the practices of the modern textile and fashion industries, and rampant overconsumption are accelerating the crisis.
Ticket Details: Included with general admission

Being and Belonging
July 1, 2023 – November 19, 2023
Being and Belonging is a bold exhibition exploring the defining issues of our time from the perspective of 25 women artists from or connected to the broader Islamic world spanning across West Africa to Southeast Asia or living in diaspora. Deftly interrogating themes of identity, power, sexuality, and home, Being and Belonging resists simple stereotypes with outstanding artworks from both emerging and well-established artists.
Ticket Details: General admission + surcharge of $8.00 CAD/adult

Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery
October 28, 2023 – April 7, 2024
Through artifacts, specimens, and immersive media experiences, learn how life and death are part of a universal, continuous, and cyclical process. This thought-provoking exhibition explores cultural and natural responses to life and death and asks big questions including: “What if I don’t want to die?”, “What will happen to my body?” and “What will happen to my ‘self’?”. Visitors learn we are all part of a universal, continuous, and cyclical process, and how life goes on after death—and could not without it.
Ticket Details: General admission + surcharge of $8.00 CAD/adult

Wildlife Photographer of the Year
November 25, 2023 – May 26, 2024
Returning for its eleventh year, visitor favourite WPY features a new selection of 100 original, awe-inspiring images representing the pinnacle of nature photography. Presenting the beauty and drama of the natural world – from fascinating animal behaviours to breathtaking wild landscapes – this exhibition is sure to fuel a deeper appreciation for the diversity of life surrounding us.
Ticket Details: General admission + surcharge of $8.00 CAD/adult

Image credits

T. rex: The Ultimate Predator: T. rex model. Visitors to T. rex: The Ultimate Predator will encounter a massive life-sized model of T. rex with patches of feathers — the most scientifically accurate representation of T. rex to date. © AMNH/D. Finnin.

Music Born of the Cold: Inuit Art, Dance & Song: Karoo Ashevak (1940-1974). Untitled (Drum Beater). About 1973. Whale bone, ivory, black substance. 46.5 x 29.5 x 51.2 cm. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, purchase, gift of L. Marguerite Vaughan. © Public Trustee of Nunavut, Estate of Karoo Ashevak. Photo MMFA, Christine Guest.

Lifers: An Art Installation by Noelle Hamlyn (working title): Lifer by Noelle Hamlyn; worn by Colleen Snell. Photograph by Geoff Coombs.

Being and Belonging: Lalla Essaydi, Bullets Revisited #34, 2014. © Lalla Essaydi, Courtesy of the artist and Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.

Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery: In Mexico, the dead are celebrated and remembered during Day of the Dead (November 1 and 2), where families gather in graveyards with food and drinks to welcome the return of those who have died. Images and figures like this calaca are made by Mexican artists to reflect the everyday activities that somebody’s loved ones might have enjoyed in life. © Field Museum, Michelle Kuo.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year: Wildlife Photographer of the Year winner was The big buzz by Karine Aigner, USA. © Karine Aigner.