The Cleveland Museum of Natural History has been evolving.
Gone are the dinosaur, taxidermy and gem galleries.
The museum has traded its former way of displaying things as a “cabinet of curiosity” for galleries designed to tell stories about how humans connect to the natural world, according to Gavin Svenson, CMNH’s chief science officer.
"How the world impacts us as humans, how we impact the world as humans and how we generally fit in,” he said. “Our water or food or the air that we breathe, all is based in the natural world, and our connection to that is of fundamental importance for the future of humanity."
The reimagined galleries reopen to the public Dec. 15 and are part of a decade-long, $150 million renovation project. Other changes include a new wildlife area, children’s room, movie theater, storage area and parking garage.
Exhibits had to be removed, reimagined and refurbished, but getting the items ready for display is no easy task.
“It starts with identifying the objects,” said Meghan Strong, the museum’s director of collections. “Then you start a sort of triage process of what is the condition of everything … give everybody a ‘health checkup.’”
Strong and her team work behind the scenes cleaning the fur of a leopard-and-gazelle statue one day and reassembling a Dunkleosteus skeleton the next. It all requires some unusual skills.
“I do have a background in archeology and art history,” she said. “So, I am not an expert in insects, but I can understand, ‘How do I preserve an insect that it stays in the best condition possible?’ I am not an expert in fossils, but I know stone and essentially that is what a fossil is. We want to make sure that these objects are here in the same condition in 100 years.”
That could also mean repurposing an artifact that’s been on display for years, such as the museum’s Dimetrodon – the skeleton of an extinct animal which looked like a spiky-backed salamander.
“He was actually embedded in a big block of foam as part of a … scenery piece,” she said. “Thankfully, we were able to work with some conservators, get him out of there safely. But I have had to scrape with little dental picks, very small pieces of foam off of his toes and make sure that he gets cleaned appropriately.”
Once an object is ready, the team works on mounting hardware, which can involve heavy machinery, welding or even 3D printing.
“The goal is that you will never notice the hours of work that went into getting an object ready to go … and the mount just disappears into the wall,” she said.
