Category: Collection

The moving project signing out

Post author By Maiken Riisom
Post date December 9, 2015
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The moving project has come to an end. The project is closing down for now, having successfully emptied the Natural History building on Musèplassen 3.

The endeavor has taken more than three years to complete and included many different challenges, but they have all been met by the team of conservators in good spirit.

To recapture some big moments in the process, we have found a few old pictures.

stones being moved by crane. — Stones being moved by crane.

Stones strapped to pallets before the crane ride.

We have moved large building stones. It was a complicated move in terms of hardware. Several trucks and a crane were needed in the process. Revisit the stones here and watch the moving video here and see the hidden treasures we found here.

Polar beer is maneuvered in place in the new storage.

In November 2013 we had the grand opening of the new central storage, read the post again here, and we emptied the first room in the exhibitions, revisit the post here.

Moose going into industrial freezing facility.

From here on the tempo picked up and birds, mammals and fish went out the building in their boxes and on pallets. Some taxidermied animals proved difficult, but happily we borrowed a crane yet again. See the posts and the videos again in massive move part one and massive part two.

Auripigment or orpiment is a mineral with stunning colors, however, also toxic. It can be ground down and was used as a pigment for painting, but is no longer in use today.

This year the moving project hit rock bottom, when we repacked, digitalized and moved large quantities of geological samples and paleontological objects in all sizes from the basement of the museum. Read the post again here.

Here the minerals are neatly packed and ready to move to new storage.

Want to see more pictures? The University of Bergen has an Instagram account called Unibergen. Furthermore, you can see pictures from Instagram related to the moving project on flickr, click here to see.

However, the moving isn’t over. Although the Natural History Museum is all but empty, the cultural history collections have only in small parts been organized and moved to new storage. This task will be carried out by the permanent staff of conservators in the future.

Furthermore, since the first steps towards rehabilitating the Natural History Museum is in progress and the construction of new exhibitions on the way, many of the objects will soon need to be conserved and moved back in. Hopefully the museum will once again open its doors in 2019.

For now the conservation team says goodbye, wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

The conservation section wishing merry christmas.

Collection Conservation Moving Nature Preventive conservation Storage

The moving project hits rock bottom

Post author By Maiken Riisom
Post date May 21, 2015
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The team has begun moving a geological collection out, as the last stage of emptying the natural history museum. The geological samples were housed in the basement and had not been curated for many years. The basement wasn’t suited for storing museum objects which became obvious when looking at some of the samples. Especially pyrite oxidation is a problem when the humidity is high.

The collection went through the following stages:

The stones were transported up from the basement in original crates.

The samples were cleaned in a temporary enclosure with compressed air….

…and repacked in new acid free boxes padded with silk tissue paper.

All samples were in addition measured for ionizing radiation with a Geiger counter.

Collection Conservation Moving Nature Preventive conservation Storage

Mummified whales and exotic rocks

Post author By Maiken Riisom
Post date February 16, 2015
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The moving project started 2015 with the last stage of emptying the Natural History Museum. The collections left are exotic birds on display and geology both the mineral exhibition and a mixed geology collection in the basement.

Undertaking this last part of the packing has given us a few reminders, for example to look through all cupboards. In small cabinets under some of the old display cases, quite a few birds were hiding.

In the mineral collection we get a closer look at some of the extraordinary rocks this world has to offer, but it also reminds us that even rocks aren`t everlasting.

Marcasite is a type of pyrite very susceptible to humidity. This one is disintegrating, a condition known as pyrite decay.

Opals are so called mineraloids, these are hydrated silica. Their content of crystalline water gives them their characteristic play of color and has made them popular gemstones. We were also very fascinated by their many colors.

In the protected whale hall the whale skeletons have been covered with Tyvek to shield them from the dust in the future renovations. The work required scaffolding and more than 300 meters of Tyvek. In the end the whale looked a bit mummified.

Collection Moving Nature

Elephantastic!

Post author By Stine Rost-Kronvang
Post date July 22, 2014
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The moving project has taken on the big animals at the museum as we mentioned in an earlier blogpost. Unfortunately for us the big animals include a stuffed African elephant. The elephant is not that big (for being an African elephant) but it’s very heavy! What the stuffing material is made of is unknown but unfortunately for us it’s not straw or any other light-weight material.

A sunny day in July seven men from a moving company came to the museum to help move the elephant out of the display case and onto a pallet. The whole operation went rather smooth but we are very happy it’s not every day we have to move an elephant of approximately 600 kg. The elephant is now mobile on a pallet and ready for new adventures.

To move the elephant the moving men had to use suction cups and crowbars.

The elephant is mobile!

Collection Culture Moving Preventive conservation Storage

Working against time

Post author By Maiken Riisom
Post date March 26, 2014
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This month, the moving project started moving cultural history objects from old storage rooms with very bad climate, as mentioned in the previous post (click here). The cultural objects are a part of Norway’s history with selections of “ølboller” and “mangletrær” unique to this region, amongst other things.

The climate has a relative humidity of more than 60% most days, making mold and insects a big issue. The plan is to move as many objects out as possible before the wood beetle’s life cycle reaches spring and they fly off, spreading to other parts of the museum. Therefore, during the last few weeks we have been packing with little space to work on and against time.

Mold and holes from insects all in one object.

Insect damage making the object very fragile.

Vacuuming after clearing out some space.

Collection Conservation Moving Nature

First exhibition room empty

Post author By madeleinarnoldsson
Post date November 11, 2013

Due to the extensive renovation of the University Museum of Bergen, the natural history collections on display will all be evacuated. The renovation process recently begun with the closing of the exhibitions on 1^st of November and now time is limited for each room inside the museum to be emptied.

Hearing the builders on the other side of the wall, the first room to be emptied was “beinrommet” the bone room. All the different bones were displayed in glass- and wood- showcases. Although most bones were loose in the cases, some of the showcases were secured in the wall with screws and the objects either fixed to the backside or secured with small nails and a sticky material. One of them had to be taken down from the wall to enable taking the objects down safely.

Before moving any of the objects each showcase was photographed. Many of the most fragile bones were packed in polyethylene boxes to secure them for the move out and away from the museum. Others were packed in wrapping tissue and placed in polyethylene bags.

Wooden frames with craniums were displayed around the room near the high ceiling. Most of them were possible to recover by ladder but problems arose with the craniums of deer and elk. These were out of reach, with wall-mounted show-cases in the way, and also had heavy antlers. We managed to move the showcases and take the large craniums down in the end.

Collection Storage

Now it’s official!!

This Wednesday we had thegrand Halloween flavored opening of our new storage facility! 80 people made the trip by bus to the grotto, among them the Director of the University Museum of Bergen and the Prorector of the University of Bergen. The day featured several speeches before Prorector officially opened the facilities by cutting the balloon ribbon.

The Director and the Prorector then cut the cake. A picture on the cake displayed an embarrassing photo of a messy draw and was cut to symbolize a new and well-organized era in the collections.

The day ended with the Prorector symbolically placing an owl on one of the shelves inside the storage.

Congratulations to the University Museum of Bergen on the new storage!

For more information you can visit the UiB webside Click here. Note that the article is in Norwegian.

bilde — …and then the team flew home in the car!

Collection Conservation Culture Preventive conservation

October update and other things than moving….

Post author By Maiken Riisom
Post date October 16, 2013

The moving project is very busy and will be even more so when the Natural History Museum closes the 1th of November. When the museum closes for renovation we have to move all the objects out so the builders can get in. November and December will be a busy time, but even though we are busy, we still have to find time for other things than moving.

The last few weeks the whole conservation department has been hard at work in the Culture History Museum cleaning the exhibits.

Vacuuming can a delicate job. — Vacuuming can be a delicate job.

Cleaning exhibits is a very demanding job, since you have to clean all the glass (next time you go to a museum notice just how much glass there is!). The glass of cause has to be cleaned on both sides as well, which takes a lot of time.

Stine i montre — Conservator on display.

We have to move all the objects out of the display cases to clean the glass and the objects and then they all have to be moved back in their display cases again. Cleaning glass, de-dusting, vacuuming, cleaning objects and polishing, all in a day’s work for a conservator!

Ut av montre — Objects moved out of display case.

Collection Conservation Preventive conservation The team

Under the southern sun

Post author By Maiken Riisom
Post date September 30, 2013

So last week the natural history conservators on the moving project had an excursion to Barcelona. Not to get a tan, though it was warm and sunny in Spain, but to attend 1^st International Conservation Symposium-Workshop for Natural History Collections (A forum in Conservation, Restoration and Preparation). The symposium lasted for three days, two days of presentations from different museums and projects all over on their work, and a day of workshops on feathers, microenvironments and plaster jackets among other themes.

Some of us attended the workshop on plaster jackets, a method developed by preparators from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington D. C. To have a closer look at this method you can visit their website: Plaster Jackets

“Cleaning and repair techniques for feathers” Allyson Rae Specialist in Organic Artifacts Conservation -UK — “Cleaning and repair techniques for feathers”
Allyson Rae Specialist in Organic Artifacts Conservation -UK

There was lots of networking as well as time for a cool drink and we would like to think we made new friends within the conservation community.

1st International Conservation Symposium-Workshop Natural History Collections A forum in Conservation, Restoration and Preparation Barcelona-Spain 18-21 September 2013 — 1st International Conservation Symposium-Workshop
Natural History Collections
A forum in Conservation, Restoration and Preparation
Barcelona-Spain 18-21 September 2013

Collection Moving

Flying stones?

Post author By Maiken Riisom
Post date June 19, 2013

As mentioned in previous blog posts, the moving team dedicated April to relocating a collection of large building stones. Here comes a step-by-step overview of the method we used for the move. To see the moving movie click here.

First week we photographed the storage where the stones were located and at the same time we made room in a different storage facility.
Second week we began the actual moving of the stones. Padding and strapping the stones on their pallets and lifting them out by crane. The crane job had to be finished before two o’clock every day, to avoid being in the way around rush hour.
The stones were then dropped off at a nearby parking lot to be washed. First week the weather was sunny and the stones dried fast, but second week it rained and water vacuuming was needed to dry the stones. The lot had garages serving as an in between storage for stones not ready to be transported to the permanent storage.
After the stones were washed, they were moved onto plastic pallets, some by crane, and then photographed for general documentation and to document damages that might occur during the move.
The dry stones would then again be padded and strapped to the pallets and moved to the permanent storage, where they will be placed.

During the whole process we had to keep track of numbers on both stones and pallets to make sure that no information were lost. The moving took three weeks.