From September 8 to 17, the Institute for Contemporary Culture (ICC) at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) presents DARFUR/DARFUR, a provocative photography exhibit projected on the exterior of the Museum's Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. Over 150 large-scale colour and black-and-white images by seven international photojournalists and one former United States Marine, explore the lives of the men, women and children who are currently under attack in the Darfur region in western Sudan. The images will be visible at night on the ROM's Bloor Street Plaza, in front of the Lee-Chin Crystal.

This travelling exhibit includes photographs taken in Darfur from 2003 to the present by former U.S. Marine Brian Steidle and photojournalists Lynsey Addario, Mark Brecke, Helene Caux, Ron Haviv, Paolo Pellegrin, Ryan Spencer Reed, and Michal Safdie. Edited into three film loops by J. Matthew Jacob and accompanied by traditional Sudanese music, this powerful selection of images provides a closer look at the village life, violence, military response, efforts by aid workers and the dire conditions of refugee camps. A longer unedited version, offering additional information about the Darfur crisis, will be on view in a small screen format in the museum's front entrance lobby.

"These powerful images of family and culture under attack, show us that the face of Darfur is our face - and that we have a collective, urgent responsibility to act," said American architect Leslie Thomas who, in September 2006, created the exhibit to bring the story of the Darfur crisis to the attention of the public and the media. DARFUR/DARFUR has been displayed on the exteriors of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (October 2006), the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC (November 2006), and the Jewish Museum in Berlin (April 2007). After the ROM, it will be on view at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from September 26 to October 3.

Renaissance ROM is an ambitious expansion and heritage renovation project that reasserts the ROM as one of North America's great museums and a leading cultural attraction for the city, province and country. Renaissance ROM continues until 2009 with several new and renovated galleries to be created at the museum.