16 May 2009
Splashy, Interactive - and Falling Apart
Passenger cars in the Canadian Museum of Rail Travel at
Cranbrook.
Cranbrook British Columbia - In British Columbia,
staff at the Canadian Museum of Rail Travel in Cranbrook dream of the day they raise the money for a building to shelter four unique
luxury trains that currently sit outdoors, where temperature fluctuations are taking their toll on walnut-panelled
interiors, stained-glass windows, and wool carpeting.
Canada's heritage is slowly rotting away as museums merely pretty up objects that are going on display, say museum administrators and
conservators. As they mark International Museum Day this weekend, they cheerfully welcome visitors into new, gizmo-packed
galleries and restored historic sites. Behind the scenes, however, in the storage areas and warehouses where the bulk of any museum
collection is located, they wonder how much longer they can hold time at bay.
"As we fiddle, Rome is burning," says Calgary conservator David Daley, a representative of the Canadian Association for
Conservation of Cultural Property. " ...Cultural heritage is similar to an endangered species; once lost, it is gone
forever."
Daley and other museum professionals say the recession is making a bad situation worse. "Care of collections has always been
difficult to finance. There are not a lot of grants or programs for it," says Nancy Noble, CEO of the Museum of Vancouver.
"It will be worse now because foundations that have supported it in the past wouldn't have as much money."
In Cranbrook, the Museum of Rail Travel has brought together the four early-20th-century Canadian-made sets
of railway cars from the golden age of rail. Entire hotels on wheels, complete with observation, dining, and sleeping cars, they would
require at least 80,000 square feet of building to house. Although the cars were built to withstand the Canadian climate, they were
not built for eternity, and outdoor changes in temperature and humidity are damaging their decorative interiors.
"The cars will return to the earth, like anything else," says executive director Garry Anderson, who estimates that in 25
years time they will have reached a point where restoration becomes impossibly expensive, adding that his museum has received a
$110,000 federal grant to cover a feasibility study for a building. "Our railway heritage is far too important to place on the
back burner," he says.
But all kinds of heritage is getting placed on the back burner, in part, museum staff suggest, because conservation is largely
invisible to the public.
Kate Taylor
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