BONE VOYAGE
The ROM’s blue whale skeleton exhibit is hitting the road for an upcoming tour,
“As you can imagine, it’s a bit of a process.” MARK ENGSTROM SENIOR CURATOR, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF COLLECTIONS AND RESEARCH
It’s your last chance to see Toronto’s largest resident — at least for a little while.
The blue whale exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum has its last day on Sept. 4. The massive mammal will then go into storage for a few months before hitting the road for an upcoming tour.
The museum hasn’t confirmed the exhibit’s travel plans, but Mark Engstrom, senior curator and deputy director of collections and research, said he expects it will go to three or four venues in Canada — and possibly internationally — before coming back home permanently in Toronto.
Once the exhibit closes, a team of about six people will take apart the 25-metre skeleton “bone by bone” and put it into special shipping crates, said Engstrom, who estimates that will take about a week. The massive plastinated heart, which is the size of a small car, also has to be well wrapped.
“As you can imagine, it’s a bit of a process,” he said.
The whale’s skull is so big that moving it in and out of the gallery requires a special port they had never used before bringing it in, Engstrom said.
The female whale has been making headlines since it washed ashore in Trout River, N.L., in spring 2014, bloated with gas and threatening to explode. Turning the 90-tonne whale into a museum-ready exhibit was a gargantuan task, taking almost three years. It made its debut in March. Engstrom said he’s sad to see the whale leave the ROM.
“I want it to stay up there forever!” he said in a phone interview.
He said he’s seen a “uniformly positive” response to the exhibit, and was particularly excited that three people told him it inspired them to pursue a career in marine biology or conservation.
“That’s the biggest reward of all,” Engstrom said, adding that his ultimate goal is to have an exhibit of all of Canada’s large whales.
Engstrom said the current exhibit has involved “tremendous” co-operation between Ontario and Newfoundland.
“This all happened in Newfoundland, so it’s as much their story as it is ours,” he said. A second blue whale, which washed ashore in Rocky Harbour, N.L., will eventually be on display at Memorial University in St. John’s.