Mosey Down Museum Memory Lane

By Wesley Macinnis, Communications Specialist

The Exhibitions Department Packs and Organizes for Modernization

Scale model of the Natural Resources Gallery, complete with groovy paper cut-outs of contemporary visitors. Replica fish from former natural history display Open Ocean. Collection of model mushrooms from the 1940s or ’50s.

Miniature model of museum exterior with totems.

For most people, moving can be a very stressful process—and most people aren’t moving a museum.

Royal BC Museum head of Exhibitions Michael Barnes needs to pack up his entire department—something easier said than done when you manage more than a dozen staff and your workspace occupies one full floor of the museum’s main building.

As part of the museum modernization project, all departments at the museum must pack up their worldly possessions in preparation for moving to the new Collections and Research Building in Colwood, BC, and a potential modernization of the downtown museum site (the provincial government will be making an announcement on the museum project later this year).

This is no small feat for any department, and for the Exhibitions department—which builds the museum’s exhibitions on site—the task ahead is especially complex.

From carpentry and electrical work to graphic design and 3D printing, Michael and his team turn exhibition blueprints into reality. Their production schedule is always full of tasks to create various exhibition assets—replicas, interactives, signs, artifact mounts and cases—so their storeroom is also full of things designed and created in house for past exhibitions.

Today, Michael is perusing the Exhibitions storeroom, walking down aisles of shelving laden with souvenirs from years past—a true memory lane for the museum.

“These I want to save. We might be able to use them again,” says Michael, brandishing two life-size replica fish, previously used in the museum’s Open Ocean display.

Saving objects to incorporate into future exhibitions is part of the museum’s commitment to waste reduction and environmental sustainability, says Barnes. “We’ll save and reuse everything we can.”

Some of the storeroom contents are self-explanatory. For example, extra seats from the Majestic—the vintage movie theatre in Old Town on the museum’s third floor— are held in reserve in case their parts are needed for repairs. Other items are less practical: the unique signs created for each exhibition are mostly kept for nostalgia’s sake.

And some finds are mysteries even to Michael, such as a hot-pink satin cushion featuring Justin Bieber, arms crossed. “I don’t know what that is from,” Michael says. “Donation pile, for sure.”

The donation pile is just one of the options for disposing of some of these less-than-essential objects. The hierarchy of sorting is as follows: save for reuse or upcycling; donate to another museum, gallery or cultural institution; donate to a non-profit second-hand store; and, if all else fails, dispose of as recycling or trash.

Toward the end of our trip through the storeroom, a miniature model train car catches the eye of Colin Longpre, a veteran carpenter and all-around knowledge keeper on the Exhibitions team. “Miniatures are a staple of exhibition design,” he says. “The level of detail in the miniature is a chance for the designer to show off their skill.”

In this case, the designer must have been highly skilled indeed, for the miniature train car houses a micro-miniature diorama of an old trading post settlement—a miniature inside a miniature.

Other members of the Exhibitions team gather around, murmuring admiration for the train car’s creator, whose work remains but whose name is long since forgotten.

For the Exhibitions team, planning for the future of the Royal BC Museum—a new Collections and Research Building and renovations on the horizon—also provides the opportunity to revisit the past.

“The bulk of the work to pack and organize all of this is still ahead of us,” says Barnes, “but we’re already having a lot of fun.”

Stay tuned to the museum’s social media channels (@royalbcmuseum) and website, where we’ll share some of the highlights turned up during the packing of the museum and archives.