The ROM’s Psychedelics exhibition: what’s in it, what critics said, and its Toronto roots

The Royal Ontario Museum’s Psychedelics: Art. Culture. Science. runs from 6 June 2026 to 3 January 2027 in the Roloff Beny Gallery on Level 4. The ROM describes it as a “ROM-original” exhibition about the art, cultural history and science of psychedelics. We haven’t visited yet; this guide is built from the ROM’s own pages and published reviews, each linked.

What is the ROM Psychedelics exhibition?

It is a museum survey of psychedelics across time and cultures. The ROM’s opening release says the concept came from Dr. Justin Jennings, the ROM’s senior curator for the archaeology of the Americas, and Colin Fleming, a ROM executive writer. The same release ties the project to Jennings’s fieldwork on the Wari Empire, which ruled the Peruvian highlands from 600 to 1000 AD, and says the ROM drew on more than 30 Canadian and international experts and community advisers.

The ROM says the show brings together 90 objects from its own collections and from lenders around the world: large paintings, 1960s rock posters, botanical specimens, cultural belongings, artworks and textiles. It starts with what the museum calls the four “classic” psychedelics, psilocybin, LSD, mescaline and DMT. The exhibition page calls it a “balanced, research-driven examination” of the subject.

The numbers vary a little by source. The ROM’s travelling-exhibition prospectus mentions 35 expert advisers, and The Globe and Mail’s review says 36 advisers and five years of planning. Mugglehead reported “nearly 90” objects. None of these contradicts the others in substance.

When does it close, and where is it in the museum?

It closes on 3 January 2027. The exhibition page lists the run as 6 June 2026 to 3 January 2027 and marks it as currently open; until late October it gave 6 December 2026, the closing date in the opening release. The ROM’s immunity-from-seizure notice for two loaned objects still covers 6 June to 6 December 2026, so check with the ROM if you are going to see those two pieces. The ROM sits at 100 Queen’s Park, Toronto, according to the footer of its release page.

• Location: Level 4, Roloff Beny Gallery (ROM exhibition page).
• Admission: an exhibition surcharge on top of museum entry, free for ROM members. See the ROM page and ticket shop for current prices.
• Audience: the ROM lists it as “Recommended for Adults, Researchers, Seniors, Students” (ROM exhibition page). We found no stated minimum age.
• Free days: CP24 reported that the ROM’s free Canada Day admission in 2026 covered the permanent galleries, not featured exhibitions such as this one.
• Catalogue: Psychedelics: Culture. Crime. Cure., edited by Jennings and Fleming, published by the ROM in 2026, 142 pages.

The ROM attaches a note to the show. It says the museum does not recommend or encourage psychedelic use or give instructions, and that most psychedelics remain illegal in many countries, including Canada (ROM release). The Globe reports that the same warning comes with the exhibition itself.

How is the exhibition organized?

The ROM says the show moves in phases that echo a psychedelic experience, built around six key questions. Its prospectus, written before opening, names three phases: Core Information, Knowledge Expansion and Reflection, which it compares to preparation, opening of consciousness and return to everyday life. The table below sets out the questions and what the ROM’s own materials say sits under each.

Medical research has its own thread. The ROM says the show covers two decades of psychedelic therapy studies, including what it calls the largest psilocybin trial for treatment-resistant depression, run at 22 sites in 10 countries with Toronto’s CAMH as the only Canadian site (ROM release). That description is the ROM’s; for how such trials work, see our guide to psilocybin clinical trials in Toronto.

Which objects stand out, according to the ROM and reviewers?

These are the works and objects named in published sources. We list only what a source names; the ROM has not published a full object list that we could find. Each item carries its own link.

• Martin Sharp’s 1967 poster Explosion, Jimi Hendrix, from the ROM’s collection (ROM exhibition page; ROM Magazine).
• Joseph W. McHugh’s 1967 San Francisco poster The White Rabbit (Keep Your Head) (ROM exhibition page).
• A Huichol offering gourd decorated with wool yarn and wax, made about 1950 to 1975 in Mexico (ROM release).
• José Benítez Sánchez’s 1975 yarn painting of the Huichol creation story, including Mother Peyote (Globe and Mail).
• A Maya vessel showing a seated lord, which the Globe dates to 1,400 to 1,200 years ago and reads as a lord communicating with a deity, probably with psilocybin mushrooms (Globe and Mail). The ROM’s immunity notice lists a loaned “Vessel with Seated Lord” of the 7th to 8th century, and the prospectus credits a vessel of that name to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Objects linked to Bwete practice in Gabon, built around the iboga shrub, including a mouth bow (Globe and Mail; ROM Magazine).
• The All-Seeing Eye, a painting by the Indigenous Peruvian artist Olinda Reshinjabe Silvano showing kené patterns (Globe and Mail).
• Fly agaric mushrooms among the natural-history highlights (ROM exhibition page), and a 3D model of the Sonoran Desert toad (ROM Magazine).
• Annie MacDonell’s large 2023 work Ego Death Trip (April release), built from a 1967 Toronto Star photograph (Globe and Mail).
• A colourful dreamscape by the American cartoonist Brian Blomerth near the end of the show (April release).
• A 1970s anti-drug video, which the Globe mentions in its account of the era (Globe and Mail).

What did reviewers say about it?

The fullest review we found is Kate Taylor’s in The Globe and Mail, published on 10 July 2026 under a headline saying the show “treads cautiously”. Her answer to how the ROM made an exhibition about hallucinogens: “very carefully.” She reports that Jennings described getting management notes saying it was too much fun, then not fun enough.

Taylor found the art the easy part and the brain science harder to show. In her account, the panel on how psychedelics may build new connections between neurons serves as the doorway to the immersive room, with its projected geometric patterns (Globe and Mail). She calls MacDonell’s Ego Death Trip one of the few newer artworks, which suggests the show leans on historical material. She also gives space to the non-Western history, from Maya ceramics to Bwete in Gabon.

Other coverage is lighter. Mugglehead, an investment and news site, described on 15 July 2026 how the show balances its immersive room with more serious historical and scientific content, and framed it as one sign of psychedelics moving into the Canadian mainstream. The Catalan art magazine Bonart wrote a descriptive piece that closely follows the ROM’s own framing. NOW Toronto ran an event listing that repeats the ROM’s text.

Our searches turned up no reviews in the Toronto Star, CBC, blogTO, Hyperallergic or Canadian Art. That doesn’t mean none exist, only that we couldn’t find and read them. Don’t confuse the ROM show with Psychedelics: The Experiential Exhibition, an immersive art show at Toronto’s Lithuanian House that Daily Hive covered in September 2022. Some search results mix the two.

How does the exhibition connect to Toronto’s psychedelic history?

The Canadian thread starts with a word. The ROM says the show includes a reproduction of the 1956 Huxley letter to Osmond, the psychiatrist who coined “psychedelic” while working in Saskatchewan (April release). The Globe notes that Osmond began using the term in public the following year. Our article on Humphry Osmond’s Saskatchewan research explains that history and the limits of his trials.

Toronto’s own psychiatric history is in the cases too. CAMH says it lent a wooden medicine tray and cups (1950–1976) from Ward 4A, a male ward of the old Queen Street Mental Health Centre, and a 1950s pill-counting tray from the former Whitby Psychiatric Hospital. CAMH served as a community advisory partner, and its psychiatrist Dr. Ishrat Husain consulted on the show.

MacDonell’s Ego Death Trip reaches back to 1967, the year Yorkville was at its height, by reworking a Toronto Star photograph of a woman on a trip (Globe and Mail). We found no source saying the exhibition covers Yorkville, Rochdale College or the Le Dain Commission directly. Our own history pages do: Yorkville in the 1960s, Rochdale College and the Le Dain Commission in Toronto, all part of our Psychedelic Toronto timeline.

For the city’s story in short form, read our 12 Psychedelic Toronto stories, which ends with this exhibition. For the 2020 business boom, see what happened to Field Trip Health. For the wider dated record, see our psilocybin research timeline.

Will the exhibition travel after Toronto?

The ROM offers it as a travelling exhibition. Its prospectus lists availability for spring 2027, summer 2027 and winter 2027–28, in runs of four months per venue, with about 90 objects and the immersive experience. We found no announced host venue. The exhibition page also links to the ROM’s travelling-exhibitions service.

What we don’t know

• What the exhibition feels like to walk through. Nobody from Shroomverse has visited, and we don’t describe any visitor experience we haven’t read.
• The full object list and the exact wall texts. The ROM has published highlights, not a checklist we could find.
• Whether the prospectus plan, written before opening, matches the final layout in every detail.
• Whether other papers reviewed it. We couldn’t find reviews in the Toronto Star, CBC, blogTO or Hyperallergic, and the Globe text we read may be trimmed by its paywall.
• Whether any museum will host the touring version after the Toronto run ends on 3 January 2027.

Shroomverse sells mushroom products and has no connection with the Royal Ontario Museum. This article is general information about a museum exhibition, built from published sources; nobody from Shroomverse has visited. It links no products, isn’t medical or legal advice, and doesn’t encourage anyone to use drugs.