Last week the
museum was closed for our annual cleaning.
Though we hate to turn away potential museum visitors, some regular
cleaning and maintenance are necessary to keep the museum running! In addition to the cleaning, I usually have
some gallery projects to complete at this time.
There are simply some projects which are best completed when the museum
is empty. My two big projects this year
were painting an exhibit case and relabeling all of the light tracks in the
galleries.
Here’s one of the old masking tape labels which has curled over time. Good luck trying to read the number on that one! |
So, I enlisted
the help of some of my coworkers to relabel all the light tracks. Susan was with me to hold the ladder and help
with the new labels, and Tom and Riley took turns manning the breaker boxes. We had a set of radios to communicate with
each other, and we turned off the tracks one at a time to determine which
breakers were connected to which tracks.
Though most of them were correct, we did have to hunt for the right
numbers for a few of them.
Nope, this track wasn’t really number 7. I removed that old label so that there's no confusion about this track in the future! |
It was a tedious
job, especially for the people who got stuck standing by the breaker boxes and
listening for instructions to flip switches. I greatly appreciate
all the help I had with this job!
Tom knows the breaker boxes very well now! |
Now I can clearly see all the labels, and I know they are correct. |
My other project
involved painting the back of one of our exhibit cases.
The first issue
was choosing an appropriate paint. With
artifacts involved, I didn’t just have the color to consider. Drying paint can off-gas substances which are damaging to artifacts. So, I used a latex paint that was low odor with
zero volatile organic compounds (VOC).
This greatly reduces the amount of artifact-damaging substances which can
be off-gassed from the paint.
I chose a green color which complimented the risers in the display. I was also hoping it would help bring out the little bit of green that’s left in the flag. |
I painted the
case on the first of our cleaning days, in order to let the paint cure for as long
as possible before returning the artifacts to the case. I also kept the doors to the case open as
much as possible while the case was empty.
Even with zero VOC, there will be some off-gassing from the drying
paint. I kept the artifacts upstairs in
a safe area while the paint dried.
I’m pleased with the final
result. The flag is much more noticeable
now. |
The museum is
looking better now, and is open for visitors again!
Photos
courtesy of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine.
Thanks..
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