So much for good intentions

I had semi-vowed to start scaling back on doing stuff at the museum. I was going to focus a tad more on other stuff at home and a tad less elsewhere at anything that involved lots of time and effort. No ambitious plans, no applying for large amounts of grant money, just some gentle coasting for awhile.

Well, so much for that plan. The building has an exterior window that was put in because the original design for the museum included at some point tacking on an ell. The door into it would go through where the oversized unnecessary window currently is. Or so I'm told -- the skeptical part of me says, well, if they'd planned to put a door through there they really shouldn't have run the hot water heating system along the base of the wall or run electrical wiring through it, but that's the type of skeptical thought I generally keep to myself. (The window is in the area to the left behind the switchboard pictured below; you can see the natural light flowing in. We are going to lose a great view of The Lake when that window vanishes. Of course, if we really want to see The Lake, all we have to do is step outside.)

In any case, once we close for the season, more or less (at our last meeting we voted to stay open on Saturdays September through May), we're blocking that window. Closing it off will eliminate a source of unwanted natural light (something that a museum should have a minimum of) and provide another section of wall for displaying stuff. Simple project. No big deal. Just need to get enough bodies together to be able to lift the humongous window out and moved out of the way. Once the window is gone, it won't involve much time or effort to plug that hole.

Except, of course, if we're removing the window, we need to get all the stuff that's in the general area of the window moved. As it happens, that's the museum gift shop area. Well, if we need to get the gift shop items out of the way, we might as well relocate it all entirely. We'll move it to the traditional gift shop location in a museum: it'll become the last space you walk through before exiting the building. That is the classic placement: you amble through the exhibit spaces and then get spit out right by the souvenir racks.

Which in turn means moving the objects that are currently in the space where we're going to put the gift shop. Okay, if we're moving them, what do we do with them? Some will go into storage, no doubt, but if we're moving the rest, what's the most effective way to use them? At the moment, we have no actual dioramas in the museum. We have exhibits that are collections of stuff, but they tend to be a hodge podge. You know, our logging exhibit has a lot of tools and photos and models and whatnot, but it's not like a slice into logging camp life. It's bits and pieces. Ditto everything else. We'd tossed around the idea of editing the area where the Monarch wood-burning kitchen range sits to make it look more like an actual circa 1900 farm kitchen, but then a better idea hit me.

We have a really old switchboard that belonged to Baraga Telephone (photo above). Baraga Telephone began in a local family's front parlor. We could take that switchboard, dress a mannequin in  Edwardian era clothing, set her at the switchboard, and do a for real diorama that highlights an important piece of local history and incorporates a lot of the stuff that as it stands now is just kind of there, i.e., parlor furniture and knickknacks that always make me feel like the ladies who set it up 10 or 20 years ago were having a good time playing house more than they were thinking about historic preservation or educating the public. We have a living room/dining room set up that's no particular time period or place but does have some really pretty tea cups on the dining table. The nice thing about the time period when Baraga Telephone was first up and running was the typical middle class parlor was rather cluttered. We can disguise a vaguely-Victorian looking 1960s arm chair with an afghan, set out the Franklin Mint collectible tea cups, and in general get the feel for the era without being 100% accurate. The key thing will be positioning the switchboard so it's the piece most visible to visitors. The rest is just set dressing to emphasize Baraga Tel started out in someone's home.

Even better, we can set it up in a way that keeps visitors from touching anything. I could finally get the exhibit of my dreams: one that is totally hands off. I'm psyched.

S.O. putting up pegboard to block off view of the attic.

Okay. Moving on. Blocking a window, moving the gift shop, shuffling things to create a diorama. Well, if we're shuffling stuff, why not take the logical next step? Let's make the path visitors follow a true circle. Let's put a door in the hallway wall so no one ever has to back track. The museum has an awkward floor plan, the result of changes in design as they ran out of money 25 years ago. As things stand now, if people want to look at a display of historic photos they walk down a hall that they then either have to walk back up or cut through the office to get back to main exhibit area. Way too many people opt for cutting through the office. Not good. So we'll cut a doorway into the hallway wall. It would come through close to the corner shown above. Not a big deal.

Except, of course, then we run into having to shuffle more stuff around, including rearranging the photos on most of that wall. Rearranging the exhibit area space near the proposed opening wouldn't be bad -- there is a display case that will have to be moved, but that's a fairly minor issue. And now that I'm thinking about moving the display case, other things are occurring to me. One thing does indeed lead to another. . .

I think my first step had better be creating some empty space in the storage building. We're going to need it.