Most people have problems storing all the stuff they’ve collected over the years – unless they’re the types who are able to ruthlessly throw most of it away.
But your storage challenges probably don’t compare to those faced by the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, which would never consider throwing away any of the thousands of historic artifacts in its possession.
About 15 years ago, it became apparent that the accredited museum would have to do something. But the necessary funding ($284,208.85 so far) wasn’t available until last year. At that point, the Relic Room was closed to general admission for several months – and some parts remained closed off for well over a year. The project is finally complete, and museum staff are proud and happy to have all those irreplaceable items finally stored more safely, accessibly and appropriately.
This involved clearing out the main storage room and finding temporary shelter for more than 4,000 valuable items, then moving it all back in when the new shelving and other storage infrastructure (see image above) were fully installed.
As with most museums, this is far more material than visitors see on display in the public galleries. This vast collection is what is kept in the “back room.” Some of it will someday be on display, but never all of it.
“When we started, all we had was old library shelving,” says museum Registrar Megan Brigman, whose job involves keeping track of all these items. The storage method was “not suitable for textiles,” among other things. Some delicate items were up on paving stones to keep them off the floor, wrapped in bubble wrap. Many things were covered up.
“We couldn’t see what we had, and it wasn’t safe,” said Megan.
What kinds of things were moved and restowed? Here’s a partial list:
- Firearms of every kind, including some artillery.
- Swords from every era since the 18th century.
- About 200 flags – some framed, others just folded up. Many of them had been very damaged on battlefields.
- Uniforms, helmets, boots, medals, buttons, ribbons, belt buckles and other items worn by South Carolinians in our country’s wars over the last 250 years.
- All sorts of pictures, from sketches to paintings to daguerreotypes and ambrotypes documenting the infancy of photography in the 19th century.
During the work in the permanent storage room, most of the material was stored in the museum’s Education Room, which shut down the on-site live programs normally staged there. For more than a year, such programs as Home School Fridays and Noon Debriefs continued, but off-site at local libraries. The Home School sessions have already started back in the Education Room, and the first Noon Debrief back there is scheduled for Nov. 14. Off-site programs, which proved to be very valuable and attractive to audiences, will continue now and then, but of course there’s no place like home.
For more than a year during the renovation, artifacts were stored in the Education Room.
Megan and other staff are very glad to have the project accomplished. “It’s so much easier to navigate that room,” she says. “Now we can find things based on era, or type.” If a uniform from the “war to end all wars” is sought, a staffer just has to look in the “World War One uniform cabinet.”
Not everything is stored in the new facility yet. Megan has more than a thousand items in her large-but-crowded office waiting to be fully processed – Revolutionary War firearms, more swords from multiple conflicts, even a torpedo – not the self-propelled submarine kind, but what we would call a “mine” today. And more.
The treasures keep coming in, and the work never ends.
From boots on the ground to boots — and other items — on the shelf.
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