From Dave Pawson, Curator Emeritus: Now that the dry collection is in the process of moving from the 3rd floor west wing to the 2nd, I walked by the coral collection this morning, saw an expanse of bare floor uncovered by recently-moved collection cases, and recalled that I hadnt seen that particular piece of floor since 1965, when we moved people and collections into the brand-new west wing. During the period when the west wing was under construction, several IZ people were temporarily housed (1964-5) in the public exhibit hall that is on the same level as the 4th floor, west wing. For a period of several months, the under-construction west wing was separated from the open western end of the exhibit hall by several layers of heavy-duty sheets of plastic. Altho the sheets were fastened to the floor and the ceiling, whenever a strong wind would blow from the west (as it usually does!), the sheets would billow and separate, and clouds of dust from the construction site would blow in to the IZ people and the collections housed in the exhibit hall. The hall was labeled Gustingdust by someone - perhaps Don Squires? - and how appropriate it was! Every day for months, the poor denizens inhabiting that hall would need to sweep or vacuum-clean the accumulated dust from their books, microscopes, etc.... So, moving IZ into the first, second, and third floors of the West Wing in the late summer of 1965 was like entering paradise...who knew then that for the next several decades we would need to live with paleozoic plumbing, heating and cooling, along with revolting rest rooms? In 1964-5, Horton Hobbs and I shared a room distant from Gustingdust, on the second floor of the museum behind the public elevators in the Constitution Avenue foyer. We could almost, but not quite, hear the howls of anguish coming from Gustingdust.... To which I replied: Today, moving into freshly renovated space one floor below is also like moving into paradise once again, 49 years later. Post demolition of the second floor of the west wing. I’m basically standing in Meredith Jones’ old office. Luckily, there are no overflowing ashtrays now! J See first image below... And our new dry collection storage room, showing just half of the new cases on compactor carriages. This room is not the entire interior space on the floor. Intruding on this space is a small wet collection storage room, slightly enlarged TeleComm, electrical and water closets, an aquarium room, rooms for processing and storing frozen tissues along with 1000 square feet of visitor and storage spaces. Regardless, in the 80% that’s left, we have enough storage capability to accommodate 30% growth for the future. And we’re flipping various dry specimen storage between the museum and the MSC to better align our collections: The new Viking case are to die for! No more squeaky, sticky wooden drawers in warped wooden quarter units. YAY! Moving the coral collection into those cases has been a dream come true. We are taking this golden opportunity to rearrange as we move, adopting shifts in the taxonomy that have happened over the course of time. Being able to do all of this as I approach retirement is totally like coming full circle! “We move forward by coming from”. See second image below... Thank you for allowing me to share and pontificate, Dave. J
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 13:07:24 +0000
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