The annual Booth Museum, spruce up!

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As the annual closed week at the Booth draws to a close, a number of changes have been made to the museum which the casual visitor may or may not notice.

One of the main aims of the week was to get all of Booth’s birds back on display. As a result the last remaining display boards near the front of the museum have been taken down, opening up those bird cases to visitors once more.

Another major aim of the week was a refurbishment of the Discovery gallery in preparation for new display cabinets, due to be installed in mid March. This extremely well used, family orientated gallery was in need of a spruce up. Over the course of the week the walls and other painted surfaces have been repainted and those surfaces not suitable for repainting have been scrubbed down and made to look as presentable as possible. Many of the labels have also been reprinted and repaired, and some additional objects have been moved out of storage and into the gallery for visitors to see for the first time.

The removal of the panels covering several of the bird displays, as well as the imminent arrival of new cabinets for the Discovery gallery, has required us to move around several of the displays in the museum. One such move was the cornucopia display of exotic birds which has featured on much of the museum’s publicity material in the past. As the move involved building a new plinth and dismantling of parts of the display, we took the opportunity to give the birds and glass a thorough clean. The misty glass is now transparent once more, and the birds have been carefully cleaned to remove the dust that had made its way into the case.

Outside of these major tasks, our team of helpers from across the various museum sites and departments, along with many of our volunteers, did sterling work giving a good clean of the case fronts, carpets and other public areas.

Many thanks to everyone who made time in their extremely busy schedules to give us a hand, and thanks to Lucy, Steve, Peter, Sarah et al, for biscuits and cakes for the troops!

Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences