One of the things I love, in general, is getting to go behind the scenes and see the things not everybody sees. Whether that is being backstage in a theatre, being behind the scenes in an event, or going into a museum depot - I just love to get a look around the nuts-and-bolts areas, to see how the mundane day-to-day things are handled, how stuff is stored.
Fortunately, doing museum presentations, giving workshops and demonstrating crafts at events means that I get plenty of opportunities to go backstage in the wider sense, and in a lot of different places. (Next up: the Adventon. I'm already looking forward to that.)
What is especially wonderful about the backstage-going are depots. Museums have most of their things not in the exhibition, but somewhere in storage, and these depots are absolutely fascinating. (They also serve a purpose - they are not only safe storage for historical items, but also help the museums to
fulfill their obligation to further research; and not all items are in a condition that they can be on display continuously, so the depot and rotation of objects makes sure that they will last.) I have next to no pictures of depots that I can show you, though, only pictures of individual items - but then, different storage areas have as many different solutions as you can imagine, ranging from regular shelves to specialised drawer cabinets. And of course there's the good old space-saving solution:
I have no clue what these are really called, but they are basically sliding shelves that form a closed box when they are sitting right next to each other. Turn the handles (slowly - always slowly and carefully!) and a whole block of these shelves gently rolls to the side, letting you access the spot you need. These are... awesome. Absolutely, utterly awesome.
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We call them roller racks at work, but internet suggests that mobile shelving is a more correct term.
What kind of fun things did you see at the museum?
In the museum the photo was taken in? There I got to see the Hallstatt originals (the salt mine textiles), along with hair or veil pins from graves (I did an experiment with a colleague about these) - and diverse odds and ends, too. In the last museum I was in, I didn't get to see the depot, but I got to go through the "backstage" area. I'm easy to please in that regard!
The German term is 'Kompaktusanlage'. We are using it for storing the textiles from the 'Schiesser' collection.
Viele Grüße,
Stefan
In Australian English they are called 'Compactus' which I suspect is a brand name which has become the common name.
Thank you, Bruce and Stefan! Now I know how to call these...