Category: Conservation

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.

Conservation Moving Nature Storage

Massive move – part two

Post author By Maiken Riisom
Post date November 3, 2014
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As promised this week’s post is about how we got the big animals out a window.

Billede 21-10-14 09.01.43 — Moose being offloaded from the crane.

All mounted animals were secured to a pallet and cowered with plastic. Approximately 60 animals had to be moved out within a week. There wasn’t room for all the animals in our own climatically stable freezer. Instead we got freezing opportunity for the objects at a local industrial freezing facility with lots of room.

All the animals in industrial freezing storage.

To read why we freeze things visit our old post Danger! Danger! Insects! or Mr. Freeze.

To show you the journey out the window we’ve made this video. To watch click here or follow the link:

Conservation Moving Nature Preventive conservation

Packed for a journey

Post author By Maiken Riisom
Post date October 10, 2014
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The big animals are almost ready to go out the window in one week’s time. The last preparations are in progress and have turned up a few challenges. Doors, windows and trucks only come in certain sizes, and the route through the museum has its limitations when it comes to width and height. Furthermore, some of the animals are unstable on their platforms, with crooked legs and leaning postures. Here are some examples of how we meet these challenges:

The Kudu antelope is more than 2 meters tall on its pallet. It can’t fit the freezer and the size of the truck also poses a problem.

The solution was fairly simple. The horns could be dismounted, thus transforming a big problem into a package of loose horns.

The antelope mount was also unstable, so supports were built on the pallet base and covered with plastic.

The mounting of this Lichtenstein’s hartebeest is among the most stable, and it could be strapped to the pallet with just a little protection on the horns and ears.

But it wasn’t just antelope and deer that were problematic – this shark is about 4 meters long, with a very long tail fin. We went a little overboard with the marking and warning signals on the tail.

Conservation Moving Nature Preventive conservation Storage

Big animals – Big deal!

Post author By Maiken Riisom
Post date July 9, 2014
1 Comment on Big animals – Big deal!
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The moving team has taken on the challenge of preparing the move of large animals from the closed museum. The animals are so big, they have to be cleaned in the museum and from there go directly to a freezing facility and storage.

One of the smaller exhibition rooms has been converted into a cleaning zone or box. In this area we use compressed air to clear the dust off the animals and the box encloses the dust and potentially health hazards in the room. Here are a few pictures.

Billede 30-06-14 10.39.53 — Muskox eyes are cleaned.

Billede 30-06-14 10.06.02 — When the animals have been cleaned, we cover them with thin plastic to protect them from dust.

While most animals can fit in our freezer some animals like the giraffe, a few sharks and some deer are either too long or too tall to fit in the container. How we are going to freeze these big animals is not yet fully planned, but borrowing space at a large industrial freezer is among the options. We will return in the autumn with an update on this part of the move!

Heavy bison on long pallet needs extra weight to move with normal jack.

Conservation Moving Nature Preventive conservation

Deflowering

Post author By Maiken Riisom
Post date May 16, 2014
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Fragile models of flowers are being handled.

The moving project started on dismounting the 1th store exhibitions at the Natural History Museum. We began with the botanical displays consisting of enlarged models of flowers and dried specimens. The objects here are generally very fragile and need delicate handling with only a few things in each box and lots of padding material.

Some display mounts are quite big and easily broken and has to be transported by hand to the conservation lab. All boxes will be carried out by hand as well to minimize vibration and shock. Dismounting and packing this exhibition room only took two days!

Conservation Moving Nature Preventive conservation Storage

Loads of alcohol!

Post author By Maiken Riisom
Post date January 29, 2014

Happy New Year and welcome to 2014!

As mentioned in our Christmas post (Click here to see) we started 2014 with packing the spirit collection on display at the museum. We decided on a movable packing solution to make the collection mobile for later convenience. Everything was placed on pallets padded with Styrofoam. The glasses were separated using Styrofoam and other packing plastics.

This work started an early Tuesday morning as can be seen on the pictures. Several of the objects were of a considerable size and we had extra help placing these on pallets by our moving firm.

Beforehand, we documented the exhibition room with photos and during the process we started to note all museum numbers in reference to display cases.

We ended up with 15 pallets of wet collection objects. These were all checked to make sure they had enough ethanol and had as close-fitting lids as possible to decrease any evaporation. In the end all pallets were covered with Tyvek to protect both specimens and Styrofoam as both are very susceptible to light (oxidation).

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 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!