Lance McMillan
Photojournalist

Preparators set in place the Kore 670 statue at Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, which is on loan from the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece, March 4, 2022.

The Royal Ontario Museum's west asian technician, Cheryl Copson, looks at a mummy on a table in the main collection room for Egyptian antiquities.

Minhee Ahn, a researcher with the Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation (OKCHF), examines a chair in the Korea gallery.

Inside the ornithology department on the third floor, drawers are filled with thousands of bird specimens, like the Cardinals pictured here.

Jane Moore sits on her couch as she talks with technicians from the Royal Ontario Museum during a home visit to pack up objects that are being donated to the museum. The home visit is a key part of the acquisition through donation process, whereby curators get a chance to examine objects in person and speak more at length with the donor to learn about the history of the objects -something that also weighs strongly into consideration when accepting donations.

A pair of dolls, among other items, rest on a table inside the home of a donor, waiting to be transferred to the ROM.

Greek and Roman Curator, Paul Denis shows a 7,000 year old "Picasso-looking" sculpture, one of the oldest in that department's collection.

Dr. Deepali Dewan, Senior Curator South Asian Arts & Culture, and Jennifer Orpana sort through Photos in preparation for The Family Camera.

Photographer Brian Boyle preparers to photograph a roughly 2000-year-old burial vessel thought to still contain wine.

A look inside one of the massive rooms at one of the off-site storage facilities. This nondescript building houses everything from Chinese tomb tiles to thousands of species of animals in formaldehyde-filled jars.

Bats are among some of the specimens stored inside formaldehyde-filled jars at the off-site storage facility.

Taxidermy animals in crates line the hallways at the off-site storage facility.

Mannequins outside the textile lab.

Research Associate and Curatorial Consultant, Christina Han, in the textile lab where she assisted the team from the Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation.

Special care was given during the examination of extremely delicate paintings by the Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation.

Preparator Dave Garvin of the Royal Ontario Museum places back a Korean ceramic object after being examined by a member of the Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation.

A pair of hands -that aren’t a matching pair- rest in a drawer in the main collection room for Egyptian antiquities.

Mineralogy and Geology Technician Katherine Dunnell holds up a chunk of gold inside a vault located in the 3rd basement of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, April 19, 2022.

Samantha adjusts a 360 degree camera as part of a shoot of the main collection room for Chinese antiquities. During the time I spent volunteering photographing objects that are part of this collection, I got to know various people at the ROM (curators, technicians etc.) and was ultimately able to be allowed access to areas that might otherwise be difficult to get.