(Museum Closure Blog) Major Cleanup of the Permanent Exhibition Room

 This blog series, “Museum Closure Blog” introduces special topics regarding the closure, and updated on a semi-regular basis. This time, we’d like to talk about how we clean the exhibition rooms.

The Gold Seal, a national treasure, is the Fukuoka City Museum’s most renowned artifact. The seal is currently on exhibit at the Fukuoka Art Museum until March 28, 2021 due to the Fukuoka City Museum’s closure.

The other day, the Gold Seal section of our permanent exhibition room, was thoroughly cleaned by museum staff. Not only the display case of the gold seal was meticulously cleaned, but also the cases of other relevant articles.

The usual Gold Seal section

The gold Seal section cleanup

All curators specializing in archaeology participated in the cleanup. They removed exhibited articles carefully from their display cases, and wiped everything, from the insides of the cases to the exhibition stands. They even removed dust on the high walls, which are otherwise unreachable in routine cleanups. It was a really time-consuming job, which can be done only when the museum is fully closed.

The collection in the permanent exhibition room includes replicas, but many of them are also genuine. To ensure that the articles are kept in good condition, we sometimes have to change the content of the exhibit, even though we call the room the “permanent” exhibition room. (Even though we use special lighting, which is free from ultraviolet, articles can be damaged if they are exhibited long term.)

For example, we regularly change the display of "The Armor of Lords" of the Fukuoka Clan in the Edo era section. Also, we need to frequently change fragile articles such as pictures and books for they are made of paper. Since the museum will be closed for four long months, we chose to return some articles to the storage room.

On the day of the cleanup of the Gold Seal’s section, a curator specializing in the Edo era, was removing articles inside the display.

Curator removing articles from the display case.