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Special Handling Needed When Packing Artwork

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By ELLEN GEDALIUS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 16, 2007

Updated: 12/15/2007 11:57 pm

TAMPA - The 1,200-pound ancient marble grave marker has stood at its post at the Tampa Museum of Art so long the purple paint behind it is several shades darker than the rest of the wall.

But the museum will be demolished in February, and the time to move the structure has come.

"You've got to get it exact," Tom Kettner says as he slowly maneuvered a forklift underneath the marble structure. "How do we look for height, Bob?"

A few attempts. A few grunts. Then they've got it just so. The men slide the ornate sculpture to the bottom of a crate, putting on white gloves for the final maneuvering.

It's a precise, painstaking, detail-oriented process, one that has been repeated in some fashion for the past several months at the art museum.

This isn't your average move: Virtually every piece is either fragile or heavy - sometimes both - and most items are quite valuable. Many are irreplaceable.

"Have you ever packed a household?" Kettner asked. "Imagine doing that for four months. This is not Tupperware that we're handling."

The Tampa museum has about 7,400 pieces in its collection, and each one needs to be packed in a way that won't harm it.

They had to figure out what to do with Aphrodite, a statue in the classical collection.

They had to figure out how to pack up the glass collection.

And how would they handle those dainty porcelain birds?

For Devon Dargan, the museum's registrar, the process started more than a year ago when she began ordering cardboard boxes, bubble wrap and foam. Then she developed a database and a box-labeling system to keep track of which piece of art is in each box. She and her boss, Elaine Gustafson, are the choreographers of the move.

How many boxes in all? Dargan doesn't know yet, but she says she's got about 120 boxes for the classical collection alone.

Most of the art will be stored in Orlando. The bulk of the classical collection is on its way to the Daytona Beach Museum of Arts and Sciences, where it will be displayed while Tampa's museum builds a new home.

If Dargan and Gustafson are the choreographers, Kettner, Bob Hellier and Bob Huntress are the dancers.

They pack one piece at a time. One day they pack an ancient, fragile Greek vase. The next, they wrap small, bronze statues in blankets. They will be unwrapped upon arriving in Orlando and placed on shelves in the storage space. Bronze can't be put in a box and sealed for two years.

They wrap paintings in a thin, archival plastic. Then a thicker, corrugated plastic is layered on top to prevent punctures in transit. The material is as strong as cardboard but not acidic, so it won't hurt the paintings.

In the underbelly of the museum, they build 18 crates of plywood for the odd-shaped sculptures and for the works too heavy for cardboard boxes, such as Aphrodite and the grave marker. A glass chair, called "Sinco Fortunadas," will be packed in a crate with padding on the bottom.

"There are ones that are hard because they're heavy," Hellier says. "There are ones that are hard because they're delicate."

Despite all their attention to detail - measuring the art before constructing the crates, allowing extra space for padding - mix-ups happen, as they did on a recent Thursday morning when they tried to pack the glass chair.

"We got a problem," Hellier tells Kettner. "Either we got the wrong crate or I built it the wrong size. I wonder if we used it for something else."

The glass chair won't fit in the crate Hellier assembled. They'll figure it out later in the day. For now, they turn their attention to a glass piece called "Gate to Blue Illusion," wrapping it in a white plastic bag and slowly placing it into a cardboard box full of peanuts.

Moving trucks come roughly every two weeks to carry the artwork away. The movers specialize in handling art, so they're careful with the pieces.

That's good, because as Hellier, Kettner and Huntress like to boast, they have yet to break a thing.

Reporter Ellen Gedalius can be reached at (813) 259-7679 or egedalius@tampatrib.com.

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