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May 14,2006 - May 21,2006 |
Minister Di Cocco unveils 'Museum month'
Initiatives include free admission to various historic sites and buildings
By Alan Patarga
Originally Published: 2006-04-30
Close to 10 million people - 9.3 million to be precise - visit them every year. Over a million are students from various provincial schools. Ontario museums are undoubtedly a first class tourist attraction.
In order to spread the word, for the past seven years, the Ontario Museum Association, in collaboration with the Ontario Ministry of Culture, has been promoting May as Museum Month, a series of initiatives taking place in our province's exhibition venues. With special lectures, concerts, discount tickets and free events, May's Museum Month is all this and more.
This was explained by Ontario's new Minister of Culture Caroline Di Cocco during a presentation held this week at the Textile Museum of Canada. "Museums," said the minister at her first official appearance in her new portfolio, "play a very important role in our Province, contributing to raise the quality of life of our people, opening windows on the past and on the future. Ontario can well be considered a gold mine, as regards museums and art collections: we have over 600 non-profit and about 200 for-profit venues. All of them reflect what we were and what we have become. This is why the Province supports - with annual funds for about $49 million - institutions such as the Royal Ontario Museum, the Art Galley of Ontario, the Gardiner Museum of Ceramics Art and many other smaller entities."
The presentation of "May is Museum Month" also included the new Insider's Guide to Ontario Museums, a book authored by Michael Redhill, Ian Brown and Michael Winter, and A Terrible Beauty: an Installation, an exhibit that is currently decorating the walls of the Textile Museum of Canada with thousands of tropical insects forming patterns and shapes.
This will be a truly special month, opening this weekend with free entry to most of Toronto's historic sites, buildings, and museums. A complete list can be found at www.doorsopen.org. On Sunday, May 7, High Park Day will be celebrated at Colborne Lodge, with the possibility of purchasing trees in the green heart of the GTA.
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