The Utah Museum of Natural History is preparing to make its big move with a half-million dollar grant from a national partnership.
In December, Save America’s Treasures granted $500,000 to the anthropology collections of the museum. The funds will be used to purchase metal storage cabinets, boxes, packing material and cloth to safely store the collections until the new museum opens in 2011 in the foothills above Research Park.
Michelle Knoll, assistant curator of the UMNH, said the grant comes at a great time for the museum, because the slow economy has also reduced the amount of donations the museum has been receiving
There are more than 1.2 million different pieces in the anthropology collection alone and each piece must be categorized and safely packed away.
Katie Green and Will Fee, both seniors in anthropology, work as interns in the anthropology department. Their biggest and most important project is to go through all boxes to ensure that the contents inside are properly identified and stored. They’ve gone through hundreds of thousands of pieces already, Fee said.
“We’ve done a lot,” he said.
But there is still more to be done. The department has five interns this semester. Each intern’s main goal is to help with the storing and eventually, the moving process.
Anthropology interns spend approximately nine hours a week in a room filled with cardboard boxes. These boxes are filled with a variety of objects, some of which the interns have to do extra research to identify.
The most rewarding part of the internship is becoming familiar with things that you never knew existed, Fee said.
Green and Fee work hard to preserve the pieces so will they last as long as possible.
However, many of the anthropology pieces that they are working on categorizing aren’t “cool,” Green said.
“If we come across something cool, it goes to the museum,” Green said. “Cool stuff isn’t supposed to be here.”
Every week, about 40 volunteers come to the museum to help with the packing process. Most of the volunteers are anthropology students, but the opportunity to volunteer is open to anyone, Knoll said.
The museum has millions of pieces, all of varying shapes and sizes. The larger collection pieces include dinosaur femurs, which can weigh up to one ton. Smaller pieces include basketry fragments so small that a sneeze could destroy them.
The anthropology collections department will not need to look for any more funding because it has received enough from the grant to ensure it will be set to move. The museum is applying for grants to move collections in hopes it too can secure the funds it needs to pack and change locations.
Museum spokeswoman Patti Carpenter said cranes are going to be needed to move the dinosaur specimens.
To the casual visitor the new museum site, which is set to be finished in 2011, is nothing but a huge hole in the ground, said Duncan Metcalfe, curator of archaeology at the museum. Metcalfe said the old museum will only be closed six months while everything is being moved to the new building.
Anyone interested in volunteering can contact Debbie Amundsen, volunteer coordinator for the museum.
Erik Daenitz– Employees at the Utah Museum of Natural History are preparing the museum?s collections for the move to its new location in the foothills of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail in 2011.