Museum staff left ‘teary-eyed’ by funding
There were tears of joy, Alex Benay said Wednesday, when employees at the Canada Museum of Science and Technology learned the federal government had approved a longsought expansion.
Tuesday’s federal budget allocated $156.4 million over three years for a new collection and conservation centre at the museum’s site on St. Laurent Boulevard.
Officials at the museum, which is in the midst of an $80.5-million revitalization of its main building, had been asking for the new facility since at least 2010, said Benay, its president and chief executive.
When the Liberal government approved the project, some longserving employees were tearyeyed, Benay said. “We’ve often been sort of the little engine that could.”
Fewer than five per cent of the museum’s 300,000 or so artifacts were on display when it was forced to close in September 2014 to remove mould and carry out urgently needed repairs. The rest were in storage at three leased buildings near the museum site.
The collection will be consolidated in the new centre when it opens in 2018 and, Benay said, the intent is to open as much of it as possible “for at least public walkthrough.”
Typically, museums have five to 10 per cent of their collections on display, Benay said. He intends to meet or exceed that target when the renovated museum reopens in late 2017.
“Now, with the collection reserve, this will blow the number out of the water,” Benay said. “For us, it’s a huge game-changer.
“If we’re able to make even 25 per cent of this facility open to the public,” he said, “that’s quite a bit of the collection that’s available for at least public walk-through.”
The new storage facility will also house state-of-the-art conservation labs and corporate offices, Benay said, as well as space for collaborations with universities and the private sector.
The new centre will pretty much eliminate any chance the museum will relocate downtown, but Benay is fine with that.
“We’re on the second-busiest rapid transit corridor in the city,” he said. “We have easy access for families for parking and a bus that goes right by there. We’re going to have a site that we’re pretty happy with that we also have room to grow on.”
And indeed, the museum is planning for growth. “We’re looking at an outdoor science park, for example, that’s available for all four seasons,” Benay said.
People shouldn’t forget, he added, that the science and technology museum is a minor partner in both proposals for the development of LeBreton Flats now under consideration by the National Capital Commission. “We do have some irons in the fire there to expose the collection downtown as well.”
The immediate challenge is to integrate the existing museum renewal with the new project announced in the budget, Benay said. The aim is to get a shovel in the ground by this fall.
Benay admits to feeling a bit nervous about it all. “The heat’s off the government and onto us,” he said. “Now we’ve got to deliver. We’ve got to channel the joy and the tears into delivering on time and on budget.”