The Royal Ontario Museum has had one of the best presented ranges of Asian collections anywhere. Korea, Japan, China.
The British Museum is a grand place, with a masterful range of artifacts, but when it comes to the Asian artifacts it can't hold a candle to the ROM for presentation. Where the ROM sux, unless this has changed in the past couple years, is the lack of explanations for its displays. Here places like the British Museum come first every time.
Still, it's the display, the sense of mood, that the ROM creates. There's one room that has a set of wood carved statues of Chinese deities that is remarkable. The near life-sized carvings are on a raised platform with a wooden railing running round it - as if you're looking into a forest. Around the walls of the room are massive tapestries depicting scenes of enlightenment, and more carved sacred figures. The tone of the room is hushed, dark, deep. It's a wonderfully soothing space, with rich wooden benches for resting.
There's another gallery that had the statuary of a funereal garden or temple (forgive me, i do not know the terms). A model explains how the complete layout works. Two favorite pieces are larger than life grey statues of two guardian-like figures. one a warrior and one if i recall aright a scholar.
It was always disturbing that the museum hosted functions in this space (the gallery has large windows and you could see it from the street). Weird karma, that. Have a toast by someone's guardian of the dead?
The ROM also has a great rock/mineral collection. Here the explanations are better, and the flow of the displays are more tractable than the overwhelming number of cases at say the Natural History Museum in London.
Unfortunately, right now it seems that
most of the first floor (where all these galleries are) is closed (the page on closures is updated regularly) for a whopping renovation: the new facade is to have the museum appearing to come forth
from a giant crystal. Only hope this doesn't wipe out the great stuff that's been there like the last renovation did!
Royal Ontario Museum
100 Queen's Park
Toronto, Ontario
M5S 2C6
http://www.rom.on.ca