You may have noticed that we have not posted an Object of the Month for October 2011. Instead, Anthropology staff has been diligently focusing on working with the construction teams installing fire detection and suppression systems in the Crane North American Indian Cultures Hall as well as in a couple of the North American Ethnology storage areas.

Starting on August 22nd, the exhibit gallery was closed to the public and became a construction zone. Temporary shelving units were set up and over 350 items from within the exhibit cases were deinstalled to keep them safe during installation work; that's about half of the material on display. This also involved moving material within storage areas down off cabinets, or canoes out from behind diorama shells to make certain areas accessible. An intensive inventory of the collection on display was also conducted and we took the opportunity to correct some problems or relabel items that needed it.

By October 14th, the construction work in the exhibit hall was completed and the Anthropology staff had finished cleaning all the exhibit cases, reinstalling the collections items, and removing the temporary storage units.

The fire suppression construction work is still ongoing in other parts of our North American Ethnology storage areas, and starting October 31st will move into our  World Ethnology storage area until December 8th.

The Anthropology and Exhibits departments also took the opportunity to update one of the long-term exhibit cases. We hope you enjoy the new Hopi tithu (kachina) exhibit with 25 new items from the collection out on display.

Please stop by and take a look through the freshly cleaned glass during your next visit!