After cleaning out that last closet and coaxing one more dustball from under your teenager’s bed, bow your head and thank the gods in spring-cleaning heaven that you don’t have to tidy up those immense elephants poised mid-battle under the skylights of majestic Stanley Field Hall.
That job belongs to the conservators and maintenance team at the Field Museum of Natural History. Four times a year, yellow barrier tape is put up around the exhibit, a platform ladder erected, a hydraulic lift brought in and back-pack vacuum cleaners strapped onto conservators, who carefully extricate the occasional spitball, then painstakingly brush dust off the critters into the vacuum’s nozzle.
Once the elephants are cleaned, it is likely the team will check out the huge fossil model of a Brachiosaurus nearby for dust or cobwebs.
Massive cleaning efforts, like those at the Field, are standard operating procedure at Chicago’s museums, where the dust, dirt and fingerprints from millions of visitors can take their toll on real-life specimens like those elephants, as well as fine art, airplanes and antiquities.
And submarines, as the Museum of Science and Industry’s Keith Gill was quick to point out.
Gill is curator of transportation and the U505 submarine. Several years ago, he tackled the job of cleaning the U505 for its 50th anniversary. Some 1,000 pounds of dirt and 200 pounds of debris dropped by visitors — a toupee, dentures, gum wrappers and more — had to be extricated from the sub’s bilge.
The city’s three largest museums, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry, deal with unique cleaning issues inherent to their collections. Yet all approach the business of cleaning in much the same way: Conservators work closely with curators to ensure the actual exhibit — the art, artifacts, specimens and models — are in good physical condition. Maintenance keeps the exhibit in top form — painted, properly lit and in working order. And housekeeping/custodial workers tackle everything from fingerprints on display cases to scuff marks on floors, for as William Caddick, executive director of the physical plant of the Art Institute of Chicago, put it: “Chewing gum happens.”
The battle gear? Lint-free cotton cloths, feather dusters, woolly mops, special brushes (especially soft, delicate ones), electric lifts to move conservators and custodians close to the objects, and special vacuums — sometimes worn backpack-style — that are usually fitted with a filter designed to catch any particles of paint or bits that may fall off during the cleaning of a specimen, artifact or model. If something (a chip of paint, a piece of fossil) inadvertently gets detached, it can be retrieved. Generally conservators have stopped using cleaning agents to make artifacts look shiny and new, fearing the damage such solutions can have on surfaces over time.
At the Museum of Science and Industry, Gill and Gerald Hubbard, director of facilities, oversee the cleaning of numerous planes, including a 727, which gets an exterior dusting every four to six weeks, with help from an electric lift, cotton or wool dusters and those vacuums with special filters.
“We clean Apollo 8 on a fairly regular basis with a wool dust buff — a fluffy lambswool on a stick — and a vacuum cleaner,” said Gill. “We’re always careful that they don’t scrape off any of the paint on anything.”
Artifact technician Jim Pelligrino has been charged with keeping the fairy castle created by silent film star Colleen Moore free of dust and rust, a problem compounded by the fact that it has running water and tiny books, pots, pans and knickknacks.
Theodis Hale, another artifact technician, keeps locomotive No. 999 dust-free with a once-a-week cleaning, using wool dust buffs on the surface and a feather duster on the spokes of the wheels. “I know if it looks good to me, it looks good to the people,” Hale said.
At the Art Institute, each curatorial department (paintings, textiles, photography, European decorative arts, etc.) has one or two technicians who are responsible for periodically dusting most pieces, from architectural fragments to oil paintings. They use sable brushes and feather dusters, the metal shanks of the tools wrapped in foam padding to limit the potential for scratching a surface.
Occasionally, a technician finds a piece of furniture that needs polishing, a piece of sculpture that has been damaged or silver that is starting to tarnish and will contact Barbara Hall, senior conservator of objects at the Art Institute.
Treatment of individual objects depends on the nature of the object, its materials, construction, age and history of treatment, according to Frank Zuccari, executive director for conservation at the Art Institute. With oil paintings, that can range from superficial dusting to removing old varnish.
The armor, for example, was conserved eight years ago but periodically has bits of rust that need to be treated. A George Segal sculpture had been superficially dusted, said Hall, “but after a while, you do get kind of a more ground-in dirt from people touching it.” To clean it, one of the conservators went over the surface with small swabs.
Even cleaning the floor near a work of art is a delicate art, said Zuccari. “Housekeeping people are aware of how they have to work around the works of art,” he said. This is especially important in the 20th Century galleries, where works of art are not necessarily limited to a frame on the wall.
At the Field Museum, Catherine Sease, head of the division of conservation, and Neil Keliher, manager of exhibition maintenance, keep track of millions of objects, from Bushman to bugs to diamonds.
“Each exhibit is unique; each artifact is unique,” said Keliher, who cleans Carl Akeley bronze sculptures with water, mild soap, a blow dryer and cloth diapers.
The canal and Nile marsh, with its live papyrus and fish, requires special cleaning: The canal is drained and scrubbed out once a month. The papyrus is trimmed four times a year. And each day, a team picks out the gum wrappers and coins tossed in. (Copper coins are especially harmful to the fish.)
The biggest cleaning challenges sit in Stanley Field Hall — those stuffed elephants and totem poles and the fossil model. They are the target of spitballs and chewing gum, and, without benefit of a display case for protection, dust settles on them.
The approach to cleaning the totem poles is much like that for the elephants. With help from an electric lift and special vacuum, Sease said, the cleaners “use feather dusters to flick the dust up in the air — off the totem and toward the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner — instead of putting the vacuum to the surface.”
A similar method is used on some of the fossils, such as the 72-foot-long Apatosaurus.
But, said Keliher, “the dinosaur fossils are cleaned only when you have to. It has to be done with a very soft brush and a vacuum with a filter.”
The limited cleaning schedule for specimens and artifacts, emphasized Keliher, is because cleaning can often cause damage.
“Ninety percent of damage to artifacts is caused by human intervention,” said Gill, recalling the days when artifacts, specimens and models might have been wrapped in newspaper and stored in cardboard boxes, or when historic posters might have been repaired with cellophane tape. “In the past 20 years, there has been a great leap in caring for artifacts.”
“We have moved away from treating objects by cleaning them and repainting them and so forth to a preventive approach to conservation,” Sease said. “We take a much more holistic approach to the collections. We’re more concerned with how collections are housed and used to prevent damage from occurring.”
All three museums have systems in place for checking the state of their collections, with staff members cruising through the displays and exhibits each morning armed with a checklist. Do the Chagall windows need a dusting? Are there fingerprints on the Pioneer Zephyr? Even Art Institute President James Wood has been known to call attention to a dusty sculpture after a stroll through the galleries.
“Dust is the biggest problem, especially in the winter when people are wearing heavy coats. You do get a lot of wool and fibers coming off,” said Hall.
Dust comes in through the front door, through aging ventilation systems and, added Gill, “People bring in dust with them. And dandruff, skin flakes . . . ” It all adds up to major dustball battles.
Compounding the cleaning problems at museums is the move toward more accessibility, more hands-on, interactive exhibits. At the Museum of Science and Industry, that means cleaning the fun house mirrors hourly. At the Field, display cases in the Grainger Hall of Gems are regularly checked for nose prints and fingerprints — the level at which the smears appear a good indication of whether the most recent visitors were adults or kids. And at the Art Institute, Caddick’s team checks walls for baby buggy bumps.
Housekeeping teams walk the museums throughout the day, armed with cloths and dust mops, keeping glass cases, handrails, front doors and floors neat.
Said the Museum of Science and Industry’s Hubbard: “The last 5 percent of any job you do is the most important part. That’s where you make your most impression.”
WHEN THE DUST HAD SETTLED . . .
Dust and dirt aren’t the only culprits playing havoc with museum collections. Consider:
– At Ft. Lauderdale’s Museum of Discovery and Science, the exhibits director wanted an anti-smoking exhibit seven years ago and collected 14,000 cigarette butts, the number of cigarettes typically smoked in a lifetime. The butts, crammed into two coffee cans, illustrated the exhibit’s anti-smoking point — until the cleaning crew threw them out. The director collected another 14,000 butts, and a spokesman tells us the exhibit is still there today.
– At a museum in Baroda, India, a fastidious cleaner vacuumed inside a dusty 3,000-year-old mummy case and, according to news stories, the cleaner actually vacuumed up parts of a mummy.
– At the Museum of Science and Industry, one unwelcome visitor was a squirrel. Several years ago, the critter apparently chose the leather on the seat of one of the museum’s rarest cars, a 1896 Benz Velo, to test his chewing ability. Animal control was brought in. The squirrel was escorted out. The Benz remains on display.
