Showing 186 results

People and organizations
Hahn, Sylvia
http://viaf.org/viaf/111020143 · Person · 1911-2001

Sylvia Hahn was born May 2, 1911 in Toronto, Ontario. She was the daughter of Gustav Hahn and Ellen Smith. Hahn attended Havergal College and later graduated from the Ontario College of Art (1929-1932). She was awarded the Governor General’s Medal for achievement at her graduation.

In 1934 she joined the Royal Ontario Museum’s Display Department. During her time at the ROM Sylvia Hahn made identification drawings for the museum's catalogue, 11 murals, models of jewels in the museum's collection (which were sold in the gift shop), a reproduction of a mural originally on the walls of an Etruscan tomb (for which she attempted to capture the original colours before air and moisture faded them), and the decoration of the Athens Gallery (including detail work on a model of the Acropolis). Sylvia Hahn retired from the ROM in 1976.

Sylvia Hahn was a member of the Ontario Society of Artists, The Society of Canadian Painter-Etchers and Engravers, and the Toronto Metal Crafts Guild.

She is represented in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada (no. 5118, no. 40451).

Sylvia Hahn died on January 2, 2001 in Whitby Ontario.

Hand, Mary V.R.
Person · 1875-1954

Mary Violet Rhys Hand was born in November 20 1875 in Great Rissington, Glouchestershire, England to Reverend William Hand and Amy Rice. She was the second born of four daughters. Hand was raised in Taynton, Oxfordshire where her father was the local Vicar. After her father’s death in 1900, the 1901 England Census lists the family in Stratton, Glouchestershire with Hands’ mother, “living on her own means.” Not much is known about Hands’ early life, or education.

Between August 1st 1912 and July 1st 1915, Mary Hand worked as a cataloguer at the Royal Ontario Museum, making her one of the first women employees of the museum. A note in the June 21, 1915 Board of Trustee minutes states that Miss Hand also served as a door attendant at the museum.

Passenger records between the United Kingdom, Canada, and the USA make note of frequent travel of Mary Hand. Her occupation was listed as “Cataloguer” “Assistant” at the Royal Ontario Museum and “Secretary.”

By 1919, Hand had returned to England where she married Herbert Randall, a Captain in the Royal Naval Reserve. They did not appear to have any children. Mary Hand died on August 29, 1954 at the age of 78.

Harcum, Cornelia Gaskins
http://viaf.org/viaf/205926045 · Person · 1878-1927

Cornelia Gaskins Harcum was born July 3, 1878 (or possibly 1881) in Lilian Virginia, United States of America. She came to Toronto, Canada in 1920 to take up the post of Associate Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Toronto and keeper of the classical section of the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology. She died in 1927.

Harrington, Paul, 1898-1966
Person · 1898-1966

Paul Harrington (1898-1966) was a dentist and amateur oologist from Toronto, Ontario. Born February 17, 1898, Harrington had a particular interest in warblers, and undertook many expeditions to look for nesting birds in various parts of Ontario, most notably the Georgian Bay area. In 1936-1937, he published a monograph in the distribution of breeding birds in Ontario; it was considered the main reference on the subject until the 1970s. Harrington died on August 29, 1966, in Toronto.

Hawley Stone, Louise
Person · 1903-1997

Louise Hawley Stone (1903-1997) was a devoted friend of the ROM. The Museum’s first volunteer, she was also a donor, fundraiser, Board member and committee chair.
In 1940, Louise Hawley Stone came to a lecture by the ROM’s new Keeper of the Chinese Collections, Bishop William White. Hooked, she studied under him to obtain her Master’s degree, and became a loyal supporter of the Museum.

Her involvement with the ROM spanned over 50 years. As the ROM’s first volunteer, she organized the study room for the Far Eastern Department in 1948. She served as a Board member (1958-1972), and was a frequent donor to the collections. Her donations to just one collection, costume and textiles, made during her lifetime number approximately 1,000 and include Japanese country textiles, English embroidery, and Chinese imperial court costume.

In memory of Bishop White, she helped establish the Bishop White Committee in 1960 to raise funds for the Far Eastern Department and to raise public awareness of Asian studies and the collections. Stone believed that every department should have a support group like the Bishop White Committee. She was instrumental in establishing the Textile Endowment Fund Committee in 1974, with a gift of a $1,000 Aluminum of Canada Bond. In 1994, she also financed the first fully endowed curatorial position at the ROM—the Louise Hawley Stone Chair of Far Eastern Art.

Louise Hawley Stone died in 1997 and left her greatest gift for last. The terms of her will established a charitable trust of $45 million for the Museum, the largest cash bequest ever received by the ROM. The Louise Hawley Stone Charitable Trust provides a steady income for the Museum to purchase objects for the collections, and fund related research and publications.

Hecken, Dorothea
Person

Dorothea Hecken was the Registrar of the ROM.

Heinrich, Theodore Allen
http://viaf.org/viaf/105529744 · Person · 1910-1981

Theodore Allen Heinrich was born in Tacoma, Washington, on 15 June, 1910, but grew up principally in the area of Berkley, California. He was educated at the University of California, where he graduated in 1931 with a major in philosophy and minors in art, history and English. Following his completion of post-secondary studies, he embarked on extensive travel in Europe and the Mediterranean, and was predominantly interested in architecture and art.

In 1932, he began graduate studies at Cambridge University (King’s College), to graduate with a Masters degree in art and architectural history in 1936.

During the Second World War, Heinrich was junior officer on the Intelligence staff of General Eisenhower, and served for two years as Deputy Chief, Enemy Communications Section of G-2, where he worked in the area of the use and administration of intelligence concerning strategic operations regarding the German-controlled railway system, or Reischbahn.

After the war, from 1945 to 1950, he remained in Germany in connection with the recovery and restitution of looted works of art. He was also involved in assisting German authorities in the rehabilitation and reorganization of war-damaged museums, libraries, archives, monuments as well as organizing art history seminars.

Returning to the United States, Heinrich was Curator of Art Collections and Senior Fellow for Art History at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, for 1951-52. From 1953 to 1955, he was Associate Curator of Paintings and Curator-in-charge of drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. There, he was involved in various projects to rebuild areas of the galleries, as well as publishing several museum books. From 1955 to 1962, he was the Director of the Royal Ontario Museum.

He was employed as professor of art history for the last twenty years of his life, beginning with his position as Visiting Professor of Art History at the University of Saskatchewan, Regina Campus, for the academic year 1964-65. In 1966, he began a full professorship at York University, which he held up to the time of his death in 1981.

Herzberg, Louise
http://viaf.org/viaf/104835030 · Person · [ca. 1937]-2015

Louise Herzberg was born ca. 1937 in Sydney, Australia to Carl Frankel and Alma Frankel. She obtained B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Sydney where she trained as a teacher and worked as a teaching fellow until 1963 when she moved to the United States to attend the University of Illinois for graduate studies in special education. She met her husband Paul Herzberg there, and they married. In 1966, they moved to Toronto where her husband Paul worked as a professor of psychology. Herzberg had a stroke in 1979 where during her recovery she gained an interest in the history of the Don Valley. In 1996, she wrote a biography of William Brodie entitled, A Pocketfull of Galls. Herzberg was also interested in nature, art, and photography.

Herzberg died in Toronto on September 24, 2015.

http://viaf.org/viaf/104536305 · Person · 1793-1871

William Hincks (ca. 1793-1871) was a Presbyterian and Unitarian clergyman as well as a natural historian. Hincks was born in Cork, Ireland, on April 16, 1794, and spent much of his career as a social reformer, advocating the abolition of slavery, and promoting a shorter work week. He emigrated to Toronto in 1853 to take up a position as Professor of Natural History at University College. While there, he published his catalogue of birds of ‘western Canada' (now Ontario). He served as editor of the journal of the Canadian Institute, as well as contributing numerous papers on natural history and other topics. He went on to become president of the Canadian Institute. The specimens he accumulated while at the University of Toronto later became part of the Royal Ontario Museum - Library and Archives's collections.

Home, Ruth
Person · 1901-1965

Ruth Home was born “Mabel Dorothy Ruth Home” on September 28, 1900 in Welland, Ontario to Thomas and Mabel Home. She was the second of three living children, with an older sister named Margaret Jane and a younger brother named Wallace Gordon.

Home read English and History to obtain her undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto where she was actively involved in the dramatic arts and acted in plays at Hart House. She received a Masters of Political Science in 1924. She, along with her sister Margaret were active members of the University Women’s Club.

In 1928, Home was hired by the Royal Ontario Museum as a “lecturer” or “instructress.” At the time, she was teaching at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts where she was enrolled in a PhD program at the time. Home eventually returned to Canada to teach at the ROM where she was an important figure in the development of the ROM’s Education Department. Home developed many educational programs at the ROM including film and lecture series, outreach initiatives, the Saturday Morning Club and the Summer Club. Home worked at the ROM until 1945.

In the years after the ROM, Home worked at the Ontario College of Art as the director of the Department of Museum Research, as well as with the Canadian Craft Guild. She became a well-known figure in the museum world, and assisted in the development of the Wellington County Museum (Elora), the Hiram Walker Historical Museum (Windsor), the Oil Museum of Canada (Oil Springs), the United Counties Museum (Cornwall), the Lennox Addington Museum (Napanee) and the Jordan Historical Museum of the Twenty.
Ruth Home died in 1965.

Hope, Clifford E., 1910-1953
Person · 1910-1953

Clifford Ernest Hope (1910-1953) was a Toronto naturalist and chief preparator in the Division of Ornithology at the Royal Ontario Museum. Born on March 31, 1910, Hope’s interest in natural history began at a young age, and he was considered an outstanding field naturalist by the age of 16. He joined the Royal Ontario Museum of Zoology and Palaeontology in 1932, eventually becoming chief preparator. While working at the ROM, Hope participated in or led 10 expeditions into various parts of Ontario including Favourable Lake, Lake Attawapiskat, Fort Severn, Fort Albany, and Cape Henrietta Maria, all in the Hudson Bay drainage area of northern Ontario. He contributed many specimens of birds, nests and eggs, insects, and mammals to the museum’s collections. In 1944 and 1945, he was loaned to the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests to investigate the effects of DDT spraying on birds in Algonquin Park; this was one of the earliest such investigations. While with the Department, Hope also studied the relation of breeding birds to the spruce budworm, and initiated bird population studies. Hope was an Associate of the American Ornithologists' Union, first elected in 1933, as well as a member of the Brodie Club and the Toronto Ornithological Club. Hope died on August 9, 1953, in Toronto.

Horne, Charles
Person · [ca. 1824-1871]

Charles Horne was a fellow of the Zoological Society of London who served in the Bengal civil service for 16 years in the 1800s. He returned to England in the early 1860s following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and resided at Clapham Common, London. Most of his field notes and journals were lost in the Rebellion.

Hose, Charles, 1863-1929
Person · 1863-1929

Charles Hose was a natural historian active in Borneo. Born in Hertfordshire, England on October 12, 1863 he entered the service of Sir Charles Brooke, second Rajah of Sarawak in 1884, and moved to British Borneo. Under his guidance, the interior of Sarawak was explored, and he collected and observed birds, mammals, plants, and insects of this area. He published several articles and books on the birds and mammals of this region, as well as his memoirs. He lived in Borneo between 1884 and 1907, when he retired from service and settled back in England. He died November 14, 1930, in England.

Howitt, Henry
Person

Henry Howitt contributed observations to the Auk, as well as publishing 'A short history of the Passenger, or Wild, Pigeon' in the Canadian Field-Naturalist in 1932.

Hunter, E.R.
Person · 1909-2011

Edmund Robert Hunter was born June 4, 1909 in Toronto, Ontario to Carl Hamilton Hunter and Ethelwyn Walker, the daughter of Byron Edmund Walker. He was the eldest of four sons, John, Harry and Alan. Edmund took after his grandfather and studied art at the Ontario College of Art between 1929-1931, after which he served an apprenticeship with C.T. Currelly at the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology. He then went and studied art history at the Courtauld Institute at the University of London between 1933-1935.

He met his wife Frances Valentine Meriwether while touring Germany. They married in Indiana in 1938 and would have two sons together.

Hunter worked in many art insitutitions across Ontario and Quebec during the late 1930s and early 1940s, including the Art Association of Montreal, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Art Gallery of Toronto (now the Art Gallery of Ontario.)

Hunter moved to the United States in 1941, and would become a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1943 after serving time in the U.S. Army during World War II.

Hunter would serve as the director of the Norton Museum of Art twice, once between 1943-1949 and again in 1962-1974. Hunter also served as Director of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, the Vizcaya Museum & Gardens in Miami, Florida and the Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, Florida.

Edmund Robert Hunter died in 2011 in Palm Beach Florida at the age of 102.

Corporate body · 1989-2013

The Institute for Contemporary Culture was founded in 1989. Its mandate was to present the contemporary world to ROM audiences. In 2005 the ICC’s mandate was refined to focus on cultural issues that have an international significance examined through the ideas and works of artists and architects. The ICC does not collect artifacts.

In 2013 ROM Director Janet Carding dismantled the institute and renamed it ROM Contemporary Culture which became one of the Museum’s eight Centres of Discovery. Ann Webb became the Managing Director of Contemporary Culture in February of 2014. Ann Webb left the ROM at the end of September 2016. As of 2018 the ICC has not been reformed nor has a new director/curator been hired.