Ask a Curator

Hi, I’m Whitney Watson. I’m the Senior Exhibition Designer here at the Missouri History Museum, and we’re in the process of deinstalling the Lindbergh Exhibition. The Lindbergh Exhibition has been up for almost a decade now. One of our goals of course is to preserve and protect the artifacts, so we take them off exhibit – we can’t exhibit them perpetually – and the process of deinstallation is one that is very detail-oriented and also moves very quickly. The process starts with some preparation and organization in advance: making lists of the objects, knowing what’s in each case, how the object is held in the display case, so that we can handle it safely and carefully. Then our exhibit’s registrar and the curator will come along with our preparators, will open the display cases, take the objects off display, and then they will carefully look at the object to make sure that, if there has been any change in the condition, if there are any scratches or fading, those kinds of things are noted. In any exhibition there are some real challenges. One of the big challenges for the Lindbergh exhibition is the globe right here. This globe belonged to Anne and Charles Lindbergh, and on it they recorded their routes, particularly across South America, Central America, and the United States. For us, this globe is really really important, and when we get ready to open the display case, because it’s so large, we’ll take a number of people, we’ll have to lift the acrylic vitrine up over our heads, move it carefully so we don’t drop it or break it, and set it down. And then we have to move the globe in the same careful manner. We don’t want to damage or break off any of the detailed carvings on the base of the object. So that’s an example of the kind of special handling that’s required. Many other things are very easy to do because they’re small and easy to handle.

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