Mark EngstromPaul Daly/The Canadian Press
The Royal Ontario Museum has named its veteran deputy director of collections and research, Mark Engstrom, as interim director and CEO. Staff at the Toronto cultural institution were notified of the appointment last week in a memo from Bonnie Brooks, chair of ROM's board of trustees. No official public announcement has been made as yet.
Mr. Engstrom, 62, assumes his new duties April 1. He succeeds Janet Carding, 49, who announced last November she would be leaving the ROM at the end of March, 2015, a little over five months before the contract she signed in 2010 would have expired. The museum, one of North America's largest, marks its 101st anniversary March 19. In 2014, its operating budget was almost $56-million, half of which came from the Ontario government.
Mr. Engstrom has been at the ROM for 27 years in a variety of curatorial posts. He was named deputy director, collections and research, in 2003. He is to remain as interim director/CEO until a new leader is found, expected later this year or in early 2016. The museum's board has struck a search committee and has hired executive search firm Odgers Berndtson to recruit candidates. Mr. Engstrom obtained his doctorate in wildlife and fisheries sciences in 1982 from Texas A&M University. He'd been an assistant professor of biology at Angelo State University Texas for six years when he was named ROM's assistant curator of mammals in 1988.
Ms. Carding became the ROM's first female director in September, 2010, after serving six years as an assistant director at the Australian Museum in Sydney. British-born, she holds degrees from Cambridge and the University of London and started her career more than 25 years ago as a curator at the Science Museum in London. Her predecessor at the ROM was William Thorsell, former Globe and Mail editor-in-chief, hired in 2000 largely to oversee from conception to completion a $270-million-plus renovation and expansion known as Renaissance ROM.
Ms. Carding undertook several initiatives during her tenure, including a significant lowering of ROM's admission prices starting in October, 2010. In 2013 she reorganized the museum into eight broad subject areas, among them ancient cultures, biodiversity, fossils and evolution, and earth and space, while opening new galleries and unveiling a new logo. She's also been keen on digital accessibility and interactivity, and created a director's fund to digitize ROM's vast collections.