Category: The team

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.

Moving The team

Goodbye 2014!

Post author By Maiken Riisom
Post date December 18, 2014
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This year has brought some big events on the moving project!

We moved out big animals through a window and most of the Natural History Museum is empty.

In 2015 we will move out the last things from the museum. We already packed the botanical exhibition, so we will be starting with geology firstly with the exhibition, and later packing a mineralogy collection located in the basement. Afterward we will tend to exotic birds on the third floor.

A hearty merry Christmas and a very happy new year from the moving project in Bergen!

Moving Other The team

Merry Christmas 2013

The snow has settled in Bergen and the holidays are approaching fast. With only a few weeks left of December, we are working on the first load of birds from the now closed Museum of Natural History. At the same time we are working on some ethnographic material and getting as much as possible ready for the last freeze of the year.

During Christmas and New Year most of us will be away and there will be no blogging during this time. Come January new endeavors will begin, starting with moving the extensive spirit collection both on display and in storage at the museum. Special care must be taken with ethanol collections as they are both heavy, flammable and in glass containers. But more on this subject in the new year.

All that is left is to say is MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR from us here at the moving project!

Hope you will click in next year for more updates!

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

Other The team

Team of Queens

A group of eight conservators make up the moving team undertaking the practical work in relocating the collections at the University Museum in Bergen. We are divided in between three fields of conservation and educated from 4 different schools ranging from Sweden to Brazil. The mixture in field, background, experience and expertise strengthens our ability to complement each other in the process of working with different museum objects originating in cultural as well as natural history.

The responsibility the moving projects two main collections is divided between Marie-Louise Lorentzen, a painting conservator educated at the department of conservation at Göteborg University, Sweden, and Christina Holmefjord, a conservator of natural history educated at the School of Conservation in Copenhagen, Denmark. Marie-Louise is in charge of moving the cultural history objects the collections and Christina the natural history objects.

The rest of the team consists of:

Soraya Rodrigues, a painting and sculpture conservator educated at Centro de Conservação e Restauração (CECOR) at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil.

Alexandra Böhme, a painting conservator educated at Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden, Germany.

Marielle Bergh, a conservator of natural history educated at the department of conservation at Göteborg University, Sweden.

Stine Rost-Kronvang, a graphic conservator (paper, books, photography and digital media) educated at the School of Conservation in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Maiken Ploug Riisom, a conservator of natural history educated at the School of Conservation in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Signe Michelsen, a conservator of natural history educated at the School of Conservation in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Alongside the practical team there is a lot of teamwork with other university staff. The project involves administrative, curatorial, it and directorial staff, both involved in the planning process and acting as consultants during the project.

From left to right: Signe, Marie-Louise, (Gaute), Stine, Maiken, Marielle, Christina, Soraya and Alexandra.

Gaute is one of our partners connected to the natural history collections in the moving project.