Over the past two days, the Weyerhaeuser Museum has experienced a condition of fruit basket upset. The Morrison County Historical Society received a Legacy Grant in order to upgrade the HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) system and insulation so that we can improve the museum’s environment for preserving artifacts.
The insulators, who are adding spray foam insulation to the attic, came yesterday to prep the job site. They need to be able to get into the attic and one of our attic access doors is right over Ann Marie’s desk. Her work room is typically filled with artifacts – some waiting to be accessioned, others in various stages of the accessioning process. The insulators said that some of the spray foam may get down into her work area, so they had covered some of her space with plastic.
Even with plastic, we couldn’t risk having insulation get on any of the artifacts, so Jan and I stepped into high gear yesterday afternoon and moved all of the artifacts out of the work room. We also moved the artifact storage boxes. At $5 a pop, minimum, for these specialty boxes, they are an investment we can’t afford to have ruined.
Ann Marie was off yesterday, so she had no knowledge that her work space had been practically emptied. She took in it stride this morning and removed all the accession books from the room, plus a number of other items we didn’t have time to move yesterday. Artifacts are now all over the museum in places they don’t typically appear.
Insulating will take place over the next couple of weeks. Staff will be working in different locations. Artifacts will remain out of place. We may decide to close the museum during our Legacy Grant work due to the disruption. We’ll keep you posted when a decision on that becomes final.
– Mary