A Tour of the MOHAI Collection
Recently, I was lucky enough to be able to tour MOHAI's full collection. Wait, full collection? What about the museum collection at the museum on South Lake Union?
Actually, only 1-2% of MOHAI's full collection is on display at the museum at any one time. The rest of MOHAI's stuff is stored in a warehouse South of the City.
Our hosts were the Collections Manager (a former professional artist who likened taking care of artifacts to taking care of her brushes) and the Collections Specialist for Costumes and Textiles (a Fashion Institute of Technology graduate). They were really knowledgeable about their work.
There’s a lot that goes into the management of the collection. Bug traps combat pests that eat away at the collection. Clothes are frozen for 10 days to kill bugs. Sticky mats in front of doors take the grime off shoe soles. Precautions are taken to minimize risk of things being damaged during earthquakes. Temperature is set lower than the standard room temp to preserve the collection. Lights are turned off to preserve the collection. Pictures are not allowed - another measure protecting the collection.
Other practical stuff I learned was about the donation and loan process. Sometimes, a group of museums will enter an agreement where one artifact can be loaned to several museums, so those museums won't have to use up resources and space finding several similar objects.
As for donations of items? About 30% of donations sent to MOHAI are added to the collection. We learned that MOHAI formerly accepted just about anything donated, and so the collection has a lot of stuff that isn't needed, such as duplicates of artifacts or historical artifacts unrelated to Seattle. As we walked down the rows (think Home Depot but with cool old stuff instead of raw building materials), we would go by many pianos or typewriters at once. Are there even any typewriters or pianos on display at the museum right now?
However, if you want to donate a typewriter or piano or something else, the team might still accept it, especially if there's a story involved. A sewing machine found in an attic you know nothing about is hard to work with, but a sewing machine owned by ______ who came to Seattle to _______ in _____? That's interesting.
But what's really interesting? Every one of the artifacts in MOHAI's collection has a story, known or not. To be surrounded by these quiet stories (and some not-so-quiet ones, like the taxidermied gorilla, Bobo) is truly a magical experience.
The personal and practical sides of this super-informative tour set it apart from any other I've been on.
A piece of the New York Stock Exchange from before it went digital, a glaring green race car, a woman's everyday shoes. The collection in storage, compared to the items on display at the museum, is different, more muted, but just as fascinating.
