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Toronto’s Museums: History of the ROM and Other Institutions

Updated · 6 min read

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) was created by an Act of the Ontario legislature in 1912 and opened to the public on March 19, 1914. It began as five separate museums and became a separate corporation in 1968, one of several large museums in Toronto with its own founding story.

Toronto’s other major museums arrived in waves: the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1900, the Gardiner Museum in 1984, the Bata Shoe Museum in 1995, and the Toronto Holocaust Museum, which opened in its present form in 2023. This article sets out when each was founded and what changed along the way.

How the Royal Ontario Museum began

According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, the museum opened as five separate museums: archaeology, geology, mineralogy, paleontology, and zoology. Charles Trick Currelly was its first director, and Sir Edmund Walker was its first chairman until his death in 1924. The five museums were combined in 1955.

Because the ROM holds both art and archaeology and the natural sciences, searches for a “Toronto natural history museum” lead to the same building. The sources checked for this article did not identify a separate institution of that name. The zoology, geology, mineralogy, and paleontology museums of the original five are the origin of the ROM’s natural history side.

ROM timeline

Year Event
1912 Act of the Ontario legislature creates the museum
March 19, 1914 Museum opens to the public
1933 An east wing and a center block open
1955 The five original museums amalgamate
1968 A new Act makes the ROM a separate corporation without share capital
1982 Renovated and expanded main building opens
1999 Expansion adds new and renovated gallery space
June 2, 2007 Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, designed by Daniel Libeskind, completed

The Canadian Encyclopedia describes the 1968 change as the creation of a separate corporation without share capital. It does not use the word independence, and neither does this article. The Renaissance ROM campaign began in 2002 with $60 million in seed money from federal and provincial governments, and the project ran from 2003 to 2010, helped by a $30 million gift from Michael Lee-Chin. Other references give April 16, 1912, as the date of the founding act and 1914 for the start of Currelly’s directorship; the Canadian Encyclopedia gives only the year 1912.

The Art Gallery of Ontario was founded in 1900 as the Art Museum of Toronto. It became the Art Gallery of Toronto in 1919 and took its present name in 1966. The gallery grew around The Grange, a house built in 1817 for D’Arcy Boulton Jr. (the Canadian Encyclopedia lists the construction years as 1817 to 1818). The Canadian Encyclopedia says Boulton’s daughter-in-law bequeathed the mansion to the city, and it became the site of the future gallery. Other accounts name a different bequest and give 1911 or 1912 for the gallery’s occupation of the house, so those points are not settled here. The Grange survives as a restored Georgian mansion that shows life in Upper Canada in the 1830s.

The Canadian Encyclopedia says the AGO’s Henry Moore Sculpture Centre holds the largest and most comprehensive public collection of Moore’s work, and that Frank Gehry’s renovation cost $276 million and opened to the public on November 14, 2008.

Gardiner Museum

The Gardiner Museum, devoted to ceramics, grew from a collection acquired by George and Helen Gardiner. The Canadian Encyclopedia states that the original building, a two-story neoclassical modernist design by Keith Wagland, was completed in 1984, and that Bruce Kuwabara, with KPMB Architects, later designed a “dramatic extension of the modest original.” Dates for its legal status, its period under ROM management, and the expansion are given only by secondary sources and are left out here.

Bata Shoe Museum

The Bata Shoe Museum says that the Bata family set up the Bata Shoe Museum Foundation in 1979 because the private collection of Sonja Bata (1926 to 2018) had outgrown its home. The museum opened on May 6, 1995, at 327 Bloor Street West, in a building designed by Raymond Moriyama. The museum reports a collection of nearly 15,000 objects spanning about 4,500 years of footwear.

Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada

The museum’s own backgrounder states that the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Toronto was established in 1999 and opened in its current 55,000-square-foot (about 5,100 square meter) former industrial space at 158 Sterling Road in September 2018. The backgrounder does not give earlier names. Secondary sources say it was earlier called the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art and occupied a former textile factory on Queen Street West, but those points were not confirmed from the museum’s pages.

Toronto Holocaust Museum

The Toronto Holocaust Museum states that its roots lie in commemorative events organized by the Federation of Polish Jews of Canada in the late 1940s. The Canadian Jewish Congress renamed its committee the Holocaust Remembrance Committee in the early 1970s, and a Toronto Holocaust Memorial Committee formed around 1983 to plan a memorial. The Holocaust Education and Memorial Centre opened in September 1985, was renamed the Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust and Education Centre in 2009, and opened as the Toronto Holocaust Museum on the Sherman Campus, 4588 Bathurst Street, in 2023.

Planning a visit

Admission rules, free-entry nights, exhibition schedules, and opening hours change often, and searches such as “Toronto museums free” cannot be answered reliably from a history article. Each museum’s own website carries the current information.

Frequently asked questions

When did the Royal Ontario Museum open?

The ROM was created by an Act of the Ontario legislature in 1912 and opened to the public on March 19, 1914.

Is the ROM part of the University of Toronto?

The ROM was created by an Ontario Act in 1912, and the Canadian Encyclopedia says a 1968 Act made it a separate corporation without share capital. The sources read do not describe its current ties to the university, so this page does not.

When was the Art Gallery of Ontario founded?

The AGO was founded in 1900 as the Art Museum of Toronto, was renamed the Art Gallery of Toronto in 1919, and has been the Art Gallery of Ontario since 1966.

Is there a separate natural history museum in Toronto?

Not one that could be confirmed for this page. The ROM opened as five museums, including zoology, geology, mineralogy, and paleontology, and natural history remains part of the ROM.

Last verified: October 2026

Sources

  • The Canadian Encyclopedia, Royal Ontario Museum
  • The Canadian Encyclopedia, Art Gallery of Ontario
  • The Canadian Encyclopedia, Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art
  • Bata Shoe Museum, About us
  • Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, Backgrounder, fall 2021
  • Toronto Holocaust Museum, history of the museum

Last verified: October 2026

Sources

  • Bata Shoe Museum, About the museum
  • Toronto Holocaust Museum, page on the museum and its history
  • Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada, about page
  • ROM and McMaster University history of the ROM founders, and Wikipedia on the Gardiner Museum (secondary)
Cite this page

APA: History of Toronto. (2026, October 23). Toronto’s Museums: History of the ROM and Other Institutions. https://historyoftoronto.ca/blog/royal-ontario-museum-toronto-discover-the-rich-history-and-artistic-treasures-of-canadas-premier-cultural-institution

MLA: “Toronto’s Museums: History of the ROM and Other Institutions.” History of Toronto, 23 Oct. 2026, https://historyoftoronto.ca/blog/royal-ontario-museum-toronto-discover-the-rich-history-and-artistic-treasures-of-canadas-premier-cultural-institution. Accessed .

Chicago: History of Toronto. “Toronto’s Museums: History of the ROM and Other Institutions.” Last modified October 23, 2026. https://historyoftoronto.ca/blog/royal-ontario-museum-toronto-discover-the-rich-history-and-artistic-treasures-of-canadas-premier-cultural-institution.

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