I may have mentioned it in the past but not long ago, the museum and Portland Harbor Museum in Portland, Maine merged. In reality, it was more like MMM swallowed up PHM. What happens when a museum closes or merges? Well, you have to go through their collections, box things up, and move them to your location.
Thats what we did all week. And it was hardly "fun." On top of the fun factor, its a sad thing to literally be packing an entire museum up into boxes and locking its doors. PHM did have a maritime message and was full of maritime artifacts so many of the things that were found will be utilized at some point at MMM. However, many of the things it has has little to no use for MMM. What do you do with these things? You can't just throw out artifacts. To make matters much worse, if an item has been accessioned, it has to be maintained in a certain collection. If you want to remove it, there is a de-accessioning process that all museums go through to remove items from a collection and it can be a hassle.
Did I mention MMM's collection space is already bursting out the seems with artifacts? The hallways in the basement and collection areas are not quite as wide anymore as museum furniture, exhibit stands, etc are literally everywhere. I'm sure this chaos will be sorted out sometime soon and MMM will find a place for everything.
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