The Moving Project

By Assistant Curators Mary & Ava

After some challenges and setbacks, the collection mobile storage project is finally set to move forward. The largest impediment to the Museum undertaking this project has been finding an acceptable temporary storage facility. As we will be storing the entirety of the non-displayed artifacts in this off-site location for several months, qMAS needed to find a location that was accessible, climate-controlled, and had good security. After some searching and some fall-throughs, the Museum has finally secured a space in the Town Centre Mall to use.

The Museum is renting the space in the Town Centre Mall as of the beginning of August 2023. The artifact collection reorganization project is expected to occur over several months, as staff must first carefully package all the artifacts and move them to the temporary storage location.

Staff expects that the packaging portion of the reorganization will take the most time. They have already begun meetings and purchasing supplies in order to move as carefully and swiftly as possible.

The qathet Museum & Archives has been ordering supplies such as acidfree tissue paper and large boxes to complete the project. We have even been consulting case studies from other museums such as the Science Museum of Minnesota who moved their collection of 1.75 million collection items in 2001. The Cumberland Museum recently installed new mobile storage to house its collection and we have been grateful for their notes on the experience.

We anticipate that this project will require many hands and are keen to accept volunteers for this special project.

The desired outcomes of this project include creating space efficiencies in which to store artifacts that will give the Museum the capacity to continue accepting donations of the community's heritage, creating safer storage spaces, becoming more familiar with all collection items, and doing an inventory of the collection.