[PHOTO] Looking east along Bloor Street at the ROM

Looking east along Bloor Street at the ROM
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

The Royal Ontario Museum is a venerable Toronto institution. The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, named after a local billionaire's bequest to the ROM and designed by Daniel Libeskind, not so much. I like it; I also think it looks like an inorganic growth on the original building. Others aren't so generous.

[LINK] Some Friday links

• Broadsides' Antonia Zerbisias reports on the mendacity of some anti-abortion researchers who apparently can't construct proper studies.


• Centauri Dreams reports on an astronomer who believes that there may be as many Earth-like planets as there are stars in the universe.


• How has political discourse been shaped by the recent mass nationalizations in Western economies? Crooked Timber considers: Might the US gain social democrats?


• Far Outliers explores the ways in which language was used, at the end of the Tokugawa, to denote change and its potential directions.


• Normblog mourns the recent death in the Buffalo plane crash of genocide scholar Alison Des Forges.


• The Pagan Prattle reports that the decision to ban the leaders of the ludicrous Westboro Baptist church from the United Kingdom has harmed positive community-building.


• Gideon Rachman shares his vision of a dystopian 2012. On the plus side, the Sarkozy-Madonna pairing does seem natural ...


• Slap Upside the Head reports that Toronto Anglicans are considering the questino of blessing same-sex unions; also, that Ethiopia's churches are calling for a ban on homosexuality.


• Towleroad provides more coverage of Atwood's decision to withdraw from the Dubai book festival and the organizer's response.


• Windows on Eurasia warns that the Russian HIV/AIDS epidemic is again growing, and takes note of the ways in which the Turkish president's visit to Tatarstan highlights Tatarstan as an international player.

[LINK] "Hugo Chávez, oil, and Venezuela"

Open Democracy's LJ feed pointed me to an interesting article, George Philip's "Hugo Chávez, oil, and Venezuela". In it, Philip argues that Chávez's political system is going to face a serious economic crunch, as the amount of oil-related income available to it becomes sharply reduced thanks to OPEC production cuts and commitments to subsidized domestic and foreign (e.g. Cuba) consumption.

[LINK] "Toronto's new-old is the new beautiful"

At Spacing Toronto, Shawn Micallef's blog post and linked eye article argues that Toronto's mixture of old and new buildings, often immediately adjoining each other, lends the city a particular creative charm.

Toronto is not a period piece, like some pristine European cities are, and we are fortunate for that. Toronto is always changing (an urban workshop more than a museum) and always has been. New things are being added all the time, making this an exciting place to live, unlike, say, the morgue of a city that Paris has become. When was the last time you heard about an interesting building or contemporary art scene that’s come out of Paris? Our lack of cohesive architectural look — what snobs might refer to as “ugly” — means this city is tabula rasa, a blank slate waiting for us to do stuff in it without too much historical burden to smother the new, allowing cultural ferment of all kinds to happen.

While the Royal Ontario Museum crystal may have various faults that can and will be argued about, the oft-heard opinion that it ruins the classical design of the original building is deserving of a challenge. If any building in this city audaciously embodies what Toronto truly is, it’s the ROM. The same new-old combination has worked next door at the Royal Conservatory of Music and across town at the National Ballet School on Jarvis and at many other locations.

Yet when new and old come together in less high-profile locations, it’s not an easy concept for Torontonians to reconcile. The internalized image of this city — at least for a large chunk of the politically active downtownish crowd — is of a low-rise, pre–World War One city. That causes problems, because much of Toronto is distinctly not that. Our notorious fear of skyscraper height seems like an invented untruth as the view from a plane’s window flying in reveals a forest of high-rises spreading to all civic borders, the most in North America after New York City.

This makes a certain amount of sense. Toronto is a diverse city, and this diversity extends to its architecture. More, bricolage is arguably one of the dominant themes of our late modern times. What think you?