ST. JOHNSBURY - The Fairbanks Museum will be closing down tours for the month of January in order to complete their yearly clean-up, which had begun five years ago. One very interesting development for this upcoming year, however, is the additions that will be made to the exhibits.
"We will be adding a lot more pieces to the existing exhibits," said Beau Harris, the Collections Manager to the Museum, "It is important for people to understand that we are adding to the exhibits, not taking them down." While discussing the additions to be made to the exhibits, Harris explained a lot about what they will be doing to add to the second level of the museum. "We have a lot of exhibits that focus on different cultures and topics, this year we will be making additions to the Chinese and Japanese exhibits, as well as to the instrument exhibit as well."
Harris wanted to stress the fact that the items going into the exhibits are not all new, in fact many of them have seen the shelf life before, but were taken down for mandatory cleaning. "While it is important to understand that many of the artifacts here at the Museum are very old and require a lot of care, it is also important to know that leaving items in shelves on display will damage the items over time if they are not taken care of and cleaned atleast once every two to three years." It was plain to see that Harris and other members of the Fairbanks Museum care greatly about the objects on display, as well as preserving the items that are currently in storage.
Harris went on to discribe the cleaning process, one that takes patience, and a lot of time. "I usually spend anywhere from thirty minutes, up to five hours cleaning one item, we have to be very meticulous about what cleaning solvents we use and how we apply it to specific artifacts and objects." Harris explained, "We will be adding, and I'm not certain about the exact number, but we will be adding a little over a hundred new objects and artifacts to the exhibits, which makes for a lot of cleaning."