Toronto Star

Come January, there will be two Royal Ontario Museums, one above ground, one below. The Museum subway station is in the middle of a $5 million remake that will see its 48 columns transformed into copies of objects from the ROM's fabled collection. And for good measure, there will also be pieces from the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art just across Queen's Park. The project, sponsored by the Toronto Community Foundation, grew out of Mayor David Miller's City Beautiful initiative. Though most of us had forgotten about the program, the foundation took it to heart. The idea is that although subway stations form an important part of the public realm, they are generally overlooked, even ignored. Given that, and the energy unleashed by Toronto's cultural rebuilding program, the intention was to capture some of that spirit and take it below street level.