Though my university training and this internship I have come accustomed to handling museum objects, and for the most part I’m perfectly comfortable doing this – except when it comes to the ceramics study galleries. I’ve always loved those new galleries but they have always scared me a little – something about densely packed fragile ceramics in-cased in glass just make me nervous. If you’re planning a trip to the museum do go and visit them, its spectacular to see all the collection in one place.
Yesterday we installed some newly calibrated OCEAN monitoring unis, the environmental monitoring system used in the museum, in the display cases which means reaching in to take the old one out and reaching back to put the new one in. Normally the curator of the relevant gallery case does this, but yesterday I was allowed to place the ‘easy’ one onto the shelf. The more difficult ones, the units hidden in back behind all the lovely highly breakable ceramics, were done by the curator. I just closed my eyes at this point, hoping we didn’t start the worlds most expensive domino falling world record attempt!
