These delicate, oversized ceramic vessels from the Asia Ethnographic Collection needed custom mounts to support and protect them during their move from Kipke to RMC.

From now until spring 2018, movers will carefully pack three million artifacts from the UMMAA (from both Ruthven and Kipke), load them onto trucks, and unpack them at their new home at the Research Museums Center (formerly called Varsity Drive) in south Ann Arbor. Keep track of the progress with our bimonthly updates. 

Now that the artifacts and books at Ruthven have been moved to the Research Museums Center (RMC) on Varsity Drive, the focus of the move has shifted entirely to the collections at Kipke.

As summer turned to fall, movers on the Corrigan team figured out how to pack and transport more than 100 delicate, oversized ceramic vessels from the Asia Ethnographic collection at Kipke to shelves at the RMC.  

Collection manager Lauren Fuka provided some context for this endeavor, which took several weeks.

“There were more than 120 large ceramic vessels in this collection, most from the Philippines, but also from China, Thailand, and other countries throughout Asia. Some are more than 30 inches in diameter. The Corrigan team created custom support mounts for each one.” 

Following the move of the oversized Asian vessels, the team began working on the collection of ethnographic pottery from the southwestern United States, said Fuka. There are more than 1,300 pottery pieces included in the collection, mostly from Arizona and New Mexico.

“After they wrap that up, the team will begin packing and moving our extensive collection of baskets from around the world,” she added.

The UMMAA team of GSRAs and museum assistants continue working on unpacking, inventorying, and rehousing archaeological collections at RMC.

Throughout the move, the UMMAA team of GSRAs and museum assistants continue working on
unpacking, inventorying, and rehousing boxes of bulk archaeological collections that had been stored at Kipke, moving them into cabinets at RMC and integrating them with the rest of the archaeological material from Ruthven.

“This important work will improve the long-term preservation of the artifacts, and make them more accessible to researchers in the future” said Fuka.

 

 

Sarah, a Corrigan mover, adjusts a shelf to make space for an oversized artifact.