July 9, 2009
FEMA grant funds facelift for collections storage at the Burke Museum
The Burke Museum will be renovating its collection storage areas over the next two years, moving items from open shelves to new storage compactors that protect them from light and dust and possible damage from earthquakes.
The renovation is being funded through a $700,000 Federal Emergency Management Agency Hazard Grant.
Compactors — basically storage units on wheels — can increase the efficiency of a space by about 50 percent, allowing more objects to be protected, according to Ron Eng, the Burke’s geology collections manager. “The trade-off is that you do lose the convenience of fixed aisles,” Eng said.
It’s a massive move indeed — millions of objects and specimens from the Burke’s ethnology and geology collections will be moved into new storage units.
More than half of the geology collections, ranging from dinosaur bones to fossil flowers, will be moved, as well as the entire textile collection and the contemporary Northwest Coast print collection.
The Steinman Collection — which comprises about 400 pieces of contemporary Native American art — will be closed to visitors during the renovation project.
Transferring the objects to the new storage units is a cost-effective way of increasing storage space while also better protecting specimens and artifacts from long-term degradation due to light and dust.
“This funding supports our goal of working to make the collections safer, both for people and for the objects,” Eng said.
The total cost of the renovation will be $949,039. The Burke received 75 percent of that total — $711,779 exactly — from FEMA.
