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SALT LAKE CITY -- Those working behind closed doors at the Utah Museum of Natural History don't want to be "bugged" about the big move to their new digs.
That's why curators, staff and volunteers are literally "debugging" everything, especially artifacts and objects that have been tucked away in dark places.
In a methodical sweep, people inside the now closed building are brushing and vacuuming precious specimens to get rid of nasty villains you don't often see.
In this process of preparing specimens and objects for the move, we have to find everything.
–Eric Rickhart, curator
#rickhart_q
The old museum building on Presidents Circle at the University of Utah has been there a long time.
"It's an elegant old building in many respects, but it's very dirty," said Eric Rickart, the museum's curator of vertebrates.
With every space filled with artifacts and collectibles -- many which have been stored away for decades -- staffers are cleaning and fumigating to make sure no hitchhikers find their way to the brand new building now under construction south of Red Butte Gardens.
Rickart said he's finding lots of surprises.
"In this process of preparing specimens and objects for the move, we have to find everything," he said. "And in finding everything, we find things that were lost."
But whether lost, tucked away or on exhibit, everything is getting debugged for the big move.
Anthropology Collections manager Glenna Nielsen showed KSL native moccasins that were donated to the museum about two months ago. An insect, or insects, had completely denuded the fur from the leather. Holes were visible across the top and all the way down to the toes.
Nielsen believes bugs had already damaged the item at the time it was donated.
Then, with a mesh screen over a Native American rug to protect the weave, we watched while Nielsen used a special vacuum to suck up intruders -- just in case any had taken up hiding along the threads.
But surface cleaning many of these specimens is not enough.
Using a large pod freezer on the loading dock and another walk-in freezer inside the new museum, more than two million objects will get what is called cryogenic fumigation.
"When you do this very quickly, and you go from 70 degrees Fahrenheit down to minus-5 degrees Fahrenheit, you're doing it so fast there's no way they (the bugs) can respond and adapt. It kills them," Rickhart explained.
To make sure no insect adapts, every object will get a three-day quick freeze, a two-day thaw, then another three-day freeze. In one room alone, we saw hundreds of boxes containing tens of thousands of artifacts all ready for the quick freeze process.
Inventory, package, pack and box; and while this is going on, others in adjoining rooms are designing and building tailor-made backdrops and brackets to hold priceless exhibits in the new building. In fact, experts from the Smithsonian Institute came to Salt Lake City to help train Utah volunteers how to make framework blend into the back of exhibits so they take on an almost floating appearance.
This whole massive, yet delicate, process -- including the big move -- is probably something few of us have seen before.
E-mail: eyeates@ksl.com
