History on the move

Moving a museum is not something you do every day. Nor it is something that can be done in a day — or even in weeks and months.

And that's why the staff and volunteers at the Utah Museum of Natural History — now, when the new museum is barely more than a big hole in the ground; now, while completion is as least a couple of years away — are already starting to focus on their Big Move.

"This is something we will only do once in a lifetime," says Duncan Metcalfe, head curator and general manager of the archaeology and anthropology collections at the museum. "We have to do it right."

The museum houses more than a million artifacts, ranging in age from 10,000 years to just a few years old. They were collected by some of the most famous archaeologists in northern Utah, from the late 19th century until the present, says Metcalfe.

And every one has a vitally important story to tell.

Thousands of years ago, life in our valley was lived in terms of daily survival. Family groups and clans followed the seasons and the food sources: migrating animals and seeds and berries. They hunted. They gathered.

Eventually, they came up with time-saving devices — pots to cook food in, chipped arrowheads to aid in hunting, woven sandals to protect feet.

It's because of such collections that we know about early cultures, he says. No one back then left any written records — but they did leave behind a library.

That's what the archaeology and anthropology collections at the Utah Museum of Natural History are, says Metcalfe. "Our collections are a library of what happened in Utah up until about 150 years ago. About 98 percent of what we know about the human experience in this part of the world comes from archaeology," he says. "And as we get new techniques and more sophisticated theories, we are teasing new information from our artifacts. We are providing storage for a new generation of history."

It's a huge undertaking and a huge responsibility, says Metcalfe.

Now, the challenge is to move them to the new museum without loss, without damage.

"The new museum is going to be so cool," says Metcalfe. "It will allow us to care for our artifacts in ways we never could."

The present natural history museum is housed in what was once the university library. "It was the most expensive public building ever built in Utah when it was finished in 1935," he says. And it made a nice home for the museum when it moved in when the new library was built in 1969.