The doors at 28 Bastion Sq. have been closed for more than three months, but that hasn’t slowed activity within the walls of the Maritime Museum of B.C.
While the museum waits to hear if it will be able to secure new space on the Inner Harbour, there’s plenty going on in the 18,000-square-foot Bastion Square space as museum staff, directors and volunteers juggle several balls.
“Though our doors are technically closed, we are still functioning,” said Barry Rolston, past president of the Maritime Museum.
Staff and volunteers have nearly 40,000 artifacts to pack. They have already cleaned, bubble-wrapped and boxed about 10,000 items so far.
Jan Drent, another past president, said the team is also verifying the museum’s catalogue, checking the condition of artifacts and culling items that are deemed no longer relevant.
“It is quite a massive undertaking,” said Dent. “The volunteers have been trained to pack according to museum procedures. … The volunteers are amazing; if we didn’t have them, we would have trouble surviving.”
Jillan Valpy, the museum’s volunteer co-ordinator, said the packing process has been daunting but rewarding.
“It’s methodical but a great opportunity to see what we have,” she said. “It’s also good for the artifacts to come out of storage and be examined.”
Twenty-five volunteers, are regularly rotated in and out of packing duties.
There is also plenty of activity outside the museum building. The most pressing of them is the ongoing negotiation to secure new space for the collection and establish the museum within the CPR Terminal building.
Museum vice-chairman Clay Evans said negotiations continue, and there’s no sense of when there may be a deal.
If a deal is struck soon, the new museum would not expect to open until March 2016, Evans said. “There may be a chance for a soft opening prior to that, but this is a more realistic timeframe.”
The Maritime Museum has exclusive rights to negotiate a long-term lease for space on the bottom floor of the CPR Terminal building, which is managed by the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority.
The province’s Shared Services agency is negotiating on behalf of the museum.
Plans call for the museum to move into a space of about 6,500 square feet, considerably smaller than the 18,000 square feet it occupied in Bastion Square.
That necessitates moving the bulk of the museum’s collection to a climate-controlled storage facility operated by the province.
It has also meant trying to maintain a presence in the community, said education curator Kate Humble.
“If no one has come in and no one is talking about it, then people lose interest, which would be a tragedy given how important the place is and the collection is to maritime history,” Humble said.
To keep it top of mind, Humble has been taking the show on the road, with visits to classrooms and outreach programs to seniors and dementia patients.
With a program called maritime memories, Humble takes artifacts that will stir memories in people who, in their youth, would have come in contact with them.
Within the building, through the bubble wrap, cleaning material and cardboard boxes, there is also a sense of excitement buzzing because of the re-location.
“We have this almost enviable opportunity,” said Bryan Smith, the museum’s operations manager.
“We have this unique chance to start totally fresh with a complete blank slate and I think that’s something a lot of museums will really envy.”
Smith said all museums have to deal with changing technology, audience and funding and, by starting from scratch, they can address many of the issues right from the start.
“This is a chance for us to design something new, very modern and very engaging, and up to date with modern museum practices, and we’re working with the public as well to find what the public wants,” Humble said.
Rolston said the museum was getting a bit tired and a move to new space and a chance to redesign exhibits and displays incorporating new technology and finding new ways to engage the visitor has invigorated staff and volunteers.
“It’s about telling the stories that are so big, so rich and there’s so many of them,” he said. “And if we can get [to the Inner Harbour] we can become a more significant player in the tourism industry.”
The Bastion Square building, owned by the province, needs extensive repairs. Its future hasn’t been determined.
Moving the museum to the new location, close to the Royal B.C. Museum, Empress Hotel and B.C. legislature, is expected to significantly increase attendance. The museum had attracted about 20,000 visitors annually in recent years.
The budget to move and re-establish the museum at the CPR building is estimated at between $2 million and $3 million, to be paid for with money from the federal and provincial governments and the museum's capital fundraising campaign.
