Heavy Metal? How about Heavy Lifting!

Wow, what a week. As some of you have read, we have been very busy at the museum setting up the exhibit that is due to open tonight for members and tomorrow, July 10th to the general public. I would have updated more but simply did not have time.

All of you have been to at least one museum at some point, I'm sure. You have NO idea how much work goes into setting up an exhibit. Nothing comes in a pretty package delivered to the museum and is put on a stand with its pre-packaged sign. The exhibit curator and his staff (typically borrowed help from other departments and interns, like myself) are building everything from scratch. Some prep work goes into the process but only so much can be done with limited space in storage, etc. You have two weeks (in most museums from what I've gathered) to completely dismantle an exhibit and get the new one up. With 4-5 people, this is no easy task.

The process: Last week the old exhibit was taken down. They always go down much quicker than they go up. I did not really help with the tear down, that was fairly easy and happened in about two days. After that, it was ALOT of heavy lifting. To complicate things, it has been extremely warm here in Maine the last two weeks, some days into the 90s which is abnormal. So the old exhibit went down, and the process of moving the artifacts, stands, bases, wall mounts, etc around and in their place. Even the simplest thing like mounting a label on the wall is a process. Its all about presentation! Measuring every bit and even mounting wooden spacers on the wall to attach the label to so it has a "floating" look to it is required. The exhibit is entitled "Heavy Metal" and is about marine propulsion. I will post pictures of it soon but there are countless outboard and inboard engines (some big, some small), props, etc. Some of these pieces are several hundred pounds and we are reduced to ancient egyptian style moving with blocks, rollers, etc to get them around without tearing the place down.

The exhibit is open to the members at 5:30 and what do you know, we actually finished early! By about 3:30 pm we put the last label up and cleaned the last thing and its ready to be shown off and looks great. Hard work well done!