Working in the Park

Today Erica and I went with Allie and Carolyn, the museum technicians, to do some work inside the park. First, we went to West Yellowstone to meet a courier at the visitor center and pick up one of Thomas Moran's journals that had been sent out for conservation. Moran accompanied the Hayden expedition and painted pictures of the Yellowstone area, which were used to convince Congress to establish Yellowstone as the first national park in the world. The HRC has twenty one of Moran's watercolor field sketches - a vital piece of Yellowstone history.

We left West Yellowstone and headed to the Fishing Bridge visitor center, where we corrected some small mistakes in the taxidermied bird exhibit. We removed the glass pieces in the front of the two cases that needed fixing and moved a couple of labels and specimens to their correct locations and then replaced the glass to front of the cases. This exhibit is a prime example of hazardous museum collections, as these birds were taxidermied with dangerous chemicals, including arsenic. When we opened the case, the smell was very strong, and it made me a little nervous. Luckily, we finished our work quickly and probably weren't exposed to too much of the chemical.

One of the cases we modified

The other case we modified