Where's All the Stuff?

Over the past two weeks, I explained a bit of what was involved in moving the Museum collection into the Esplanade. Walking through our permanent gallery, you might well think, “There’s not so much stuff here; why’d it take so long to move?’

A lot of times people think that the entire museum collection is on exhibit. That’s not the case—we have about 1,000 objects on permanent display; about 4% of our collections. The main reason social history museums like the Esplanade collect things isn’t to build exhibits—it’s to preserve the objects that are witness to our history. We preserve these things so that present and future generations can learn from and enjoy them. But, it’s tough for a lot of people to learn from and enjoy a bunch of stuff on storage room shelves, so a portion of what we collect does go on exhibit, with explanatory text, and often with photos to help create a logical context for the artefacts. The exhibits themselves usually have a theme to them as well, also to help create context—otherwise, the stuff would just be a confusing jumble of unrelated things. Our permanent gallery’s theme is the history of Medicine Hat and surrounding district since about 1880 to present; temporary exhibits we’ve hosted have been on such themes as toys, ranching, prisoner of war camps, etc.

So, what about all this extra stuff, the stuff that’s not on exhibit? If the public can’t see it when they visit the galleries, why keep it? Well, we do draw upon that in developing our temporary exhibits—“Playful Revelations” in 2009 put 75 toys on exhibit that otherwise would have been in storage; our upcoming “Hand Made by Altaglass” exhibit will feature a couple of hundred Altaglass tools and products that otherwise aren’t normally on display. We also replace artefacts in our permanent gallery with one from storage—both to ensure there’s a regular infusion of new stuff to see, and also to make sure some items won’t be damaged by prolonged exposure to light.

We also collect items to document past ways of doing things. For example, we’ve got a Mountie uniform that, for some reason, was stuffed into the walls of the second Mountie barracks built in Medicine Hat around 1909. The uniform was only found when that building was torn down in the 1960s, to make way for the present Royal Canadian Legion building. You can probably imagine what clothing might look like after being stuck in a wall for 50 years—dirty, torn, and generally not in good shape for a display. But, we have it because it demonstrate what the Mountie uniform was like in 1909—the material it’s made from, how the fabric was cut, and sewn, etc.

We also occasionally have researchers come to us, to learn from our collections. In the past year, we’ve had someone from the University of Manitoba drop by to research Metis textiles in our collection; another museum researched what types of quilts and hand-woven textiles we have; and a collector came in to research our military medals. Something that we haven’t done a good job of advertising is that anyone can come to us as a “researcher” to gain access to our collections in storage—just call me (403-502-8587) to make an appointment, and I’ll be happy to show you what you’d like to see!