Moving Monumental Sculpture: a Creative Process

At the museum we have something called a sculpture trail. The museum is located on a mountain side overlooking the National Elk Refuge, and the Slate Mountains (a small mountain range parallel with the Tetons. So because of this prime location we have a paved little outdoor hike lined with life-sized bronze sculpture of various local animals at certain points.  The very beginning of the sculpture trail starts with a larger than life sized sculpture of two bison. It used to be on a platform, but it needed repairs, so it has been sitting in the parking lot without a base for a few month. Anyway, a few days ago, the base was fixed so we had to go about moving sculpture that was estimated at about 6,000 pounds. There is literally five people, including me, on the curatorial team, and it was our job to deal with it. We have also moved several other massive, but smaller sculptures since. 

We ended up hiring people from a local foundry to help up move the bison. I found out that at a larger institution, they would l

ikely have a bronze conservator on staff that would oversee the entire process. Because we are a small institution we obviously do not have one. So the entire curatorial team was just out there, talking with the people from the foundry, and figuring it out. The registrar, Emily, told me “I like our situation, because you don't need to have all the answers, if we do not know something we all just take a minute to figure it out together.” I found that to be true, there was a lot of creative problem solving. We ended up wrapping the sculpture at key points with cloth covered chains. However, some of them were still  a little abrasive so we buffered them with blankets. we then lifted the chains with a piece of heavy machinery.

One thing that I didn't anticipate being so difficult was keeping the public away from the area. We put up traffic cones but everyone wanted to get up close and take pictures of the process. We ended up posting people at certain points just to keep people away. However, this is an extremely touristy area, and at times there was language barriers in telling people to back away. 

After we got the sculpture to the other side of the parking lot to the pedestal we had to put two people on ether side of it to physically guid it into place. Then the curator wanted to rotate it, but he machine couldn’t do that so we kind of twisted it by hand and ended up swinging it too. Once we had it in the position we wanted, we fixed it to the pedestal with plaster and a large bolt. 

Over all this was a very interesting experience, we have moved a lot of large sculpture since then, but nothing quite as large.  I know this might seem like an odd thing to write about but I feel like I learned a lot about what it means to be a part of the curatorial team at a small museum. Its all about working together to figure things out. There is very rarely a single correct solution to a problem, it all about creative problem solving, and it is ok to not have all the answers. 

Pictures are the view from the museum into the Elk Refuge and the sculpture we moved.