Moving a museum collection, animal by animal.

On the move #1

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it Super… moose? Nah. Just a regular, stuffed Eurasian elk, lifted out of a third story window down to a waiting lorry.

This, of course, is not part of the animal’s normal migration pattern, but a necessity due to the renovation of the Natural History Collections at the University Museum of Bergen.

On the move #2. All wrapped up and ready to go

On the move #3. Giraffe. Horizontal

The moving of mice and moose, this exodus of elephants, took place October last year. I was hired to document the strange odyssey for the museum and followed the crew for a couple of curious days, as 60 large, stuffed animals of various condition were crane-lifted out of the museum and driven away for temporary storage.

The thing is, however, that nobody really knows how temporary this exile of the animals will be. As of now, the restoration is on hold due to lack of funding. In the last state budget, no money were allocated for this purpose. These days the museum is just empty. The halls are quiet, no work being done.

And the moose is missed.

On the move #4. Anaconda

On the move #5. Not marshmallows

On the move #6. The lion, the witch lioness and the wardrobe container

On the move #7. Trunk love

On the move #8. Soaring over Museum Square in a hot air ballon (not really)

On the move #9. Ibex and crew

On the move #10. Lorry not marked “Elephant inside”

On the move #11. Polar bear returning to the cold. A four week stay at a commercial freeze storage ensures that no living pests are brought into the museum’s own storage facility

On the move #12. Sign reads “Unauthorized items”

(Last week the museum invited me back to make a new series of photographs. These were the subject of my last blog post: The Empty Museum.)