(
By Christy O’Grady, Chief Conservator
Generally, visitors to The Children's Museum of Indianapolis aren’t surprised to find exhibits filled with rare and wonderful toys and games, amazing dinosaur fossils, and even ancient Egyptian artifacts. However, they might be surprised to find a Chinese Imperial Robe displayed in an exhibit about dinosaurs and dragons, or Koryiak and Inuit clothing in an exhibit about polar bears and penguins!
The Children's Museum has actively collected textiles since its founding in the 1920’s. Today this collection includes almost 9,000 objects that include adult and children’s clothing as well as household and ceremonial textiles from all over the world. This incredibly diverse collection includes wedding gowns and Halloween costumes, opera capes and cowboy chaps, feathered parkas, silk kimonos and even a headdress made from beetle wings!
As you can imagine, proper storage all these wonderful pieces takes A LOT OF ROOM! Presently, the textile collection is stored in two cramped rooms where overcrowding is causing damage to fragile fibers and delicate beading. In fact, sometimes the curators find it challenging to select pieces for exhibit because the shelves are so crowded it is difficult to safely remove an object from its storage box.
The solution? A state of the art mobile shelving system that would allow us to store everything properly and make access much easier for staff. The challenge? Finding extra money and time to pay for the shelving and the careful transfer of every piece from the old to the new storage.
The good news is that this spring the museum was awarding a prestigious grant from IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Sciences) to help us improve the storage of the textile collections. The Conservation Project Support Grant contributed $125,000 to the museum to help us buy the super-efficient shelving system and hire temporary assistants to help with the rehousing. The entire project will cost $300,000 and take two years to complete. It’s a detailed plan that will also include updating all the records in the data base and creating custom storage mounts for many fragile garments. But at the end of the process we’ll be able to better protect and use all of the wonderful treasures in the textile collection.
