A peek behind scenes as new Royal Alberta Museum takes shape
Workers continue to feverishly get hundreds of thousands of artifacts ready in Edmonton for public display. Postmedia reporter Juris Graney tagged along.
Q What’s going on at the museum?
A What’s not happening is probably more to the point. Dozens of workers have so far moved 421,000 objects from the old building into the museum’s new 84,000-square-foot digs at 103 Avenue and 97 Street.
Work is well underway on creating the new displays, including the human history section of the museum. That’s what reporters were allowed to see Wednesday.
Q What’s happening in there?
A The human history section will cover 30,000 square feet of the first floor of the building and will have around 3,200 objects on display in 160 individual stories or exhibits.
It is one of six interwoven galleries that tell 14,000 years of Albertan history.
“Each object tells a story and the approach we have taken in our interpretation, it is really about objects that we have collected over the past 50 years,” said museum executive director Chris Robinson.
“We wanted to bring them out and have them reveal their stories to you.”
“We’ve used a number of interpretative techniques throughout the gallery to highlight the objects. They are not bystanders to these exhibits, they are front and centre.”
And to get them to front and centre, you need mounts. Lots of mounts, and that’s where professional mount makers come in.
Q Who are they?
A They are people like James Leacock from Multiform Studios.
Leacock and nine others have been working since July to create some 2,600 individually designed and crafted mounts for the museum’s most prized possessions.
Leacock and his company are no strangers to museums, having recently wrapped up work at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, the Detroit Institute of Art and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.
“This has been a massive undertaking,” Leacock said. “I think this has been one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever been involved in.”
Q When’s the gallery set to open?
A As for when you will get the chance to visit, Robinson wouldn’t be drawn on an exact date except to coyly say that it would open sometime in 2018.
Q What’s happening with the old museum?
A The museum will continue to occupy the old building at 102 Avenue and Wellington Crescent for a while yet.
Robinson said they haven’t finished the onerous task of moving the entire collection, but have until the end of 2019 to vacate the building.
The building is owned and managed by Alberta Infrastructure and it will make the call on what happens to it, Robinson said. jgraney@postmedia.com
We’ve used a number of interpretative techniques throughout the gallery to highlight the objects. They are not bystanders to these exhibits.