A Morning at the Museum

Mornings in the Museum sometimes feel like the movie Night at the Museum.  I cannot say that I have ever experienced anything coming to life when I am inside an exhibit or diorama, but when my colleagues walk by and see two Conservator’s standing beside a bull moose – I am sure it may seem like that to them! So, what happens before visitors, school and tour groups walk through the gallery doors to immerse themselves in Manitoba’s History? You will most likely see the Conservation department fixing, repairing, or cleaning many of the wonderful displays before everyone arrives. 

The Conservation team is responsible for the long-term preservation of all 2.9 million artifacts and specimens in the Museum’s collection. That means that we look after not only what is held in our collection vaults, but also everything that is on display the 52,000 square feet of exhibition space – including the beautiful dioramas.  Gallery maintenance is an ongoing daily, monthly, and annual job where we rotate between different exhibitions to make sure they are being preserved in the best possible way. 

This maintenance happens in many different forms. It usually involves brushes, vacuums, drills, glass grippers, ladders and scissor lifts! We investigate exhibit cases for pests that may be attracted to eating certain types of objects and remove them from display if they are found.

Image below: Senior Conservator, Carolyn Sirett, vacuuming the exhibits in the HBC gallery.

The Conservation team will also carefully go into dioramas to vacuum dust-off furry mammals, wash plants that line the riverbed streams, and repair branches on trees.  Perhaps what many visitors may not know is that most of the material in our dioramas are real – yes, the plants and mosses are real.  These plant materials have been carefully sourced during fieldwork, pickled in a solution for preservation, and painted to bring back the “living colour” of what it looks like in the natural environment.  It is irresistible to reach out and touch these very real pieces of art that are just within arm’s reach, but Conservator’s are big on no – touching!  Asking visitors to not handle specimens stems from our passion to preserving history for many visitors to enjoy, and it is also the most challenging part for Conservation department to repair in the galleries. 

Image above: Assistant Conservator Estelle Girard adjusting some of the phragmites in the Delta Marsh diorama.

Next time you visit the Museum, I hope you have a moment to look around at all the amazing pieces on display, and now know that there are folks hidden behind-the-scenes caring for them each morning before you arrive. 

We’ve all had the experience of reading something when a word, a name, or a concept piques our curiosity and sets us off on a research quest. This often happens when I am working with human history collections at the Manitoba Museum and regularly inspires my inner ‘Nancy Drew’.

One such search started with a donation mailed from England. About 40 years ago the donor had purchased a box of old cards and letters for a few pence in a second-hand shop. Amongst them was a black-bordered letter sent by Leonard Beer to Mary Thurman in Sheffield England, dated June 1914. Sadly, the letter contained a funeral card for Leonard’s wife Rebecca Annie and their infant daughter Mary. Leonard lived at 499 Inglewood, Karnac, MB. The donor asked if we knew where Karnac was located as he was unable to find it on a map.

A quick search of reference books on Manitoba geographical names didn’t turn up any results, past or present. Fortunately, we live in a world with vast on-line resources at our fingertips. The next step was a quick Google search for Karnac which naturally turned up thousands of hits for the famous Karnak temple complex near Luxor, Egypt. It is not unusual for Manitoba communities to be named for places all around the world.

The Karnac Post office was located near the corner of Roseberry St. where today you will find the Good Earth Restaurant. The block from Roseberry to College was home to numerous shops including John Watson Co. Grocers at 1849 Portage, while Ralph R. Magee, ran the post office and a drug store next door at 1849-1/2. By 1918 at Harold Harris operated the grocers and Alex J. Perrie was the new druggist and postmaster. According to The History of Pharmacy in Manitoba, 1878-1953 Percy Braund opened the first pharmacy in St. James at the corner of Roseberry and Portage in 1910. Ralph Magee was the first manager and he purchased the business in 1913. He was succeeded by Alex. J. Perrie ran Perrie’s Pharmacy until he retired in 1945.

On May 1, 1913 the Winnipeg Free Press had reported that a new post office would be opening in St. James, “in R. Magee’s drug store at the corner of Roseberry street and Portage Avenue”. Known as the Karnac post office, it was intended to serve “all the district lying between Brooklyn and Rutland streets”. This would be the third post office in the area along with the St. James post office and the King Edward at the Winnipeg city limits. Readers were reminded that they should add the proper post office to the address rather than just name and St. James or a street address and ‘city’ in order to avoid a delay in mail reaching its destination. That would explain why our letter writer, Leonard Beer, used Karnac as his return address.

The same article mentioned that “the residents of St. James would like to draw the attention of their Winnipeg correspondents to the fact that letters sent to them require a two-cent stamp as St. James is not in the city” where only a one-cent stamp was needed. Residents of St. James often “have to pay two cents extra before they can receive their mail on account of only a one-cent stamp being on the envelope.” On March 17, 1916 the paper reported a change in policy meant that “all territory adjoining the city has been taken into the Winnipeg postal area.” Postage rates within the city had doubled to 2¢ but the 1¢ surcharge to mail a letter from Winnipeg to Karnac was no longer required. Readers could also look forward to letter carrier delivery in the future.

In the end, a simple question from a donor about an unusual place name led me to some interesting postal and neighbourhood history. Along the trail, I also discovered the Karnac Picture Palace or the Karnac Theatre, not far from the post office at 334 Roseberry and Ness Ave. It appears to have operated from 1915 to 1920. But that will have to be a case for another day.

What do you think of first when you think of a museum specimen? A taxidermy bison? A pinned butterfly? The skeleton of an entire pliosaur? A museum could answer with: study skin, skeleton, taxidermy mount, fur/pelt, wet specimen, thin section, microfossil, slab, herbarium specimen, dried, pinned, in silicone, nest, egg . . . the list goes on! Preservation in natural history collections takes many forms, and all have their benefits in different fields. As Collections Management Specialist, it’s my job to take care of and properly store all these different specimens, and I’ve come across a couple distinctions to share with you.

Mount vs. Skin

Taxidermy mounts are very exciting for exhibits and dioramas, and help us visualize the animal as it was in life. It may be posed alone or in a group, displaying behaviours or doing activities in a snapshot of what is observed in the wild. Mounts can be nearly any kind of animal: bird, mammal, reptile, fish, insect, or amphibian.

Study skins are a kind of taxidermy in that they are the skin of an animal that is stuffed, but it is not posed, and often lies flat. As opposed to mounts, study skins take up comparatively less space in collections cabinets yet offer just as much information about the exterior of the animal. They also allow researchers to study aspects of the environment through chemical changes in the isotopes in the animal’s skin. Study skins are usually birds and smaller mammals. Furs and pelts are similar to study skins, but are not stuffed; they usually come from larger animals, like deer, bears, seals, and big cats.

Wet vs. Dry

The Museum’s collection of “wet” specimens are those animals which are stored in alcohol or other fluid preservative. Some of us may imagine a creepy laboratory of things floating in jars, but fluid-preserved specimens have the unique advantage of preserving the entire specimen, including internal contents. The fluid preservative prevents the specimen from decaying, and researchers are able to later decant specimens for anatomical dissection, or for new preparation as a skeleton. The most common specimens preserved in this nature are fish, reptiles, amphibians, or invertebrates like molluscs, but sometimes even birds, mammals and plants are preserved this way as well.

The opposite of these are “dry” specimens, which are left to dry rather than being submerged in fluid. For molluscs, this means only the shell is preserved. For all other animals, “dry” preservation involves drying the skin and/or skeletonizing the bones. The benefit of dry specimens is that the tissue is not chemically altered by the alcohol or fluid preservative it would be stored in. Fluid preservative often discolours specimens, and it is easier to access and handle specimens when they’re dry.

3D vs. 2D

Three-dimensional (3D) specimens are the most common kind of specimen throughout the Museum, which makes sense, given all the specimens in jars or mounted in exhibits. However, a surprising number of natural history specimens are actually two-dimensional (2D) in nature. The majority of the botany collections at the Manitoba Museum are dried, pressed plants adhered to paper sheets, and stored flat, almost like files in folders. These herbarium specimens preserve characteristics of the plant such as roots, leaves, stalks, and flowers, and can record a particular stage in a plant’s annual or life cycle. (If you’ve ever pressed a flower in a book at home, you’re part of the way along to making your own herbarium specimen!) A few specimens, however, have characteristics that are best preserved by keeping them 3D—things like lichens, fungi, moss, and fruits are stored in boxes rather than pressed flat.

Another surprising place to find 2D specimens is in the paleontology collections. “Thin sections” are very thin slices of rock, made in order to access a cross-section of a fossil. These are especially helpful when looking at prehistoric corals, plants, and anything with a structure that can be studied as a slide under a microscope.

Real vs. Replica

Multiple Parts

A “specimen” in natural history is an item or collection of related items with one catalogue number. For example, an animal that is donated to the Museum will become one specimen with one catalogue number, but may be prepared in a way that results in multiple parts, such as both a skin and a skeleton. Both of these parts will receive the same catalogue number, so we know they’re from the same animal.

But how does the Museum store multiple different parts of the same specimen? Sometimes they are separated, and have to be stored in different places in the collections. For small animals like voles or shrews, the skeleton and skin of one animal can be stored in the same cabinet: the skeleton stored in a vial, and the study skin laid flat. In the case of some deer, caribou, and wapiti, the huge skin is stored in one cabinet, the skeleton is stored in another, and the antlers and skull are stored on a wall rack.

Bird nests and their associated eggs are also usually separated, as material used to build the nest may degrade over time in ways that can damage the eggs if they are left in place. As well, bird eggs should be stored with a lot more cushioning, to protect them from being crushed.

Fossils with multiple parts are usually stored together, even if moulds or thin sections are made of the specimen. Herbarium specimens can also have multiple parts stored together. For example, if parts of a specimen accidentally fall off of the sheet, they can be stored in a paper packet that is labelled and attached back onto the sheet.

Hopefully this has shed some light on the different kinds of natural history specimens, how they’re stored, and how they can be used. Each museum will differ in what specimens they keep and how they house them, but these are some of the basics that I’ve seen and worked with at a couple different institutions. If you’re curious about specimens you see in the galleries at the Manitoba Museum, ask a volunteer or member of staff about them—we’d love to tell you more!