This is an archived event from Culture Days 2025.
Images
Ron Benner’s Corn Roast & 20th Anniversary of As the Crow Flies Garden Installation
In-person
Agriculture Climate Action Culinary & food History & heritage Interdisciplinary Kids LGBTQIA2S Museum Music Nature & outdoors Performance Photography Physical activity & movement Public Art Sculpture & installation Self-guided Storytelling Tour Visual arts Youth & teensDate and time
Location
Museum London
421 Ridout Street North
London, ON
Access
Free.
Offered in English.
Wheelchair accessible and has gender-neutral washrooms.
About
Ron Benner’s Corn Roast & 20th Anniversary of As the Crow Flies Garden Installation
September 20, 2025
1:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Rain or shine.
Drop-in, no registration required. Pay-what-you-may, all welcome.
Join us at Museum London for our annual Corn Roast with artist, writer, and gardener Ron Benner, celebrating the 20th anniversary of his outdoor photographic and garden installation, As the Crow Flies. The event will feature Benner’s remarkable roving corn-roasting wagon, Maiz Barbacoa, which showcases images of corn roasters from around the world alongside the names of corn in over 50 languages. Enjoy delicious roasted corn on the cob served with butter, salt, Mexican chili powder, and fresh lime juice.
About As the Crow Flies
Installed in 2005, As the Crow Flies is a site-specific garden artwork nestled in what was once an elliptical reflecting pool on Museum London’s grounds. Over the past 20 years, it has been transformed by Benner into a thriving water garden, home to native plants and symbolic crops carefully cultivated to grow along the 81.14th meridian—a longitudinal path that connects London, Ontario, to sites such as Cape Sable, Florida, and the Bay of Pigs, Cuba. This symbolic alignment draws attention to global patterns of colonization, migration, and resistance through agriculture.
Set against the natural beauty of the Deshkan Ziibi (Thames River), the garden has evolved into a living ecosystem, supporting birds, amphibians, insects, and aquatic life. It stands not only as a striking visual installation but as an environmental sanctuary and ongoing act of ecological stewardship.
About the Corn Roast
Benner’s annual Corn Roast offers a relaxed and welcoming space to gather with the community, enjoy the landscape, and reflect on the garden’s lasting impact over the past two decades. It’s an opportunity to celebrate Ron Benner’s unique approach to art-making; one that fuses horticulture, activism, and storytelling into a singular, powerful experience.
Guests will have the chance to meet the artist, learn more about the installation’s history and significance, and share in the simple joy of roasted corn, a food that carries deep cultural and historical resonance across the Americas.
This community event is presented as part of London Heritage Council’s 24th annual Doors Open London, celebrating the Sights, Sounds, and Stories in our City.
Links
- Ron Benner: As the Crow Flies museumlondon.ca
Organizer
Museum London
Situated at the forks of the Deshkan Ziibi / Thames River on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak and Attawandaron, and operating within the homeland of the Chippewas of the Thames, Oneida Nation, and Munsee Delaware Nations, Museum London is a non-profit corporation and registered charity.
Our Mission: Museum London mobilizes art and history to build community and co-create an inspired future.
Our Vision: We are a leading art and history resource that connects communities, inspires change, challenges ways of thinking, and ignites creativity towards a more just world.