Blog from the basement: Getting our objects to Australia and back

First off, can you tell us more about what the objects are and why they’re travelling to Australia?

One of the main aspects of working with museum collections and making sure that they are accessible to the public is by displaying our objects in our galleries. We also welcome researchers and visitors into stores and our research facility, and we digitise our objects and add to our collection online to make them more accessible for a wider audience. But another way we do this is by lending our objects to other museums and galleries in the UK and around the world.

This time, we received a request from Queensland Art Gallery in Australia to borrow our Cottingley Fairies photographs to go on display in their Fairy Tales exhibition, which ran from December 2023 until April 2024. The exhibition explored centuries of folktales in a visual and captivating way, by bringing together traditional and contemporary art, design and film.

Our five Cottingley faries photographs—taken by Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright, two young girls who lived in Cottingley here in Bradford—suggested the possibility of the existence of fairies and gnomes! So the images were very fitting for their exhibition.

These photographs were confirmed as genuine by photography experts at the time and corroborated by the author Arthur Conan Doyle. So naturally they captured people’s imaginations. It was only after 50 years that Frances and Elsie admitted the photographs were fake, and they used cardboard cutouts.

What steps need to be taken to prepare an object to travel overseas? Are there are any special considerations for an object to travel via plane?

Once we receive the request from the borrowing institution, one of the first things we always need to do is to consult our own programme for exhibitions and loans to ensure that the objects are available at the requested date. If there are no clashes with our programme, then the conservation team will assess the objects to determine if they are suitable to go on loan, since the objects will likely have to go through a long process of travel by road, and possibly by air or sea.  We also need to estimate any time for conservation work to prepare the objects and provide any associated costs as well.

Next, we analyse the borrowing institution’s conditions by checking the gallery has the appropriate temperature for the objects, relative humidity and light specifications, to make sure that our objects are protected throughout the entire process.

Once all work is approved, we can then start conservation treatments and write detailed condition reports with information about the condition of the objects before they leave the museum.

The Cottingley fairies photographs are then ready to be mounted and framed in a sealed micro-climate that aims to minimise fluctuations of relative humidity throughout the journey. Humidity is one of the biggest agents of deterioration to photographs so it is crucial that the sealed package is as effective as possible. The other crucial aspect to consider for an object traveling by road and air is reducing vibrations throughout the journey.

Finally, objects are packed inside a foam padded wooden crate that provides support to the frames and insulates them from heat, moisture and light.

So how are the objects packed to ensure they are safe and won’t be damaged during travel?

We use a sealed package system that reduces changes in humidity throughout the travel period. As the journey down-under is particularly lengthy, taking at least 24 hours, protection against high moisture is really important.

The sealed package uses specialist protective materials that provide a barrier from the outside environment and aims to keep the humidity within the package at 50% by using silica gel. We share more details about the bespoke sealed packages we use in a previous post.

I implemented this sealed package system in 2016 but with this loan I used data loggers for the first time to put the system to the test.

I added one mini data-logger inside one of the packages and another one inside the crate to test their efficiency during transit.

Then I patiently waited for seven months until the fairy photographs returned home to West Yorkshire. The results were exciting and helped me to identify some areas for improvement.

Both crate and sealed package are effective in buffering the objects from relative humidity fluctuations throughout the journey

The humidity inside the crate reached a maximum of 63% and a minimum of 48.5%

While the humidity inside the sealed package reached a maximum of 58.7% and a minimum of 46.4%.

In the future, and as an improvement, I will make sure the silica gel is conditioned to a lower percentage of humidity, with the aim of keeping the overall humidity inside the package at around 50%.

Does someone from the museum act as a courier and travel with the objects?

Since Covid-19 and the shift to more online interactions, SMG has moved to virtual couriering wherever possible.

This is in line with SMG’s sustainability policy to reduce the number of staff travelling by air while also reducing costs. As much as possible, we also re-use frames and crates—which we were able to do with this loan.

As before, we use specialist art transport agents that serve as our eyes and ears on the ground in the airport warehouse. They supervise the crates being loaded onto the aircraft cargo and on the road between museums and airports.

Virtual couriering allows us to remotely oversee the opening of the crate at the borrowing institution, agree to the current condition of the objects after transit and even see the installation of frames onto the gallery’s wall.

We do this before the exhibition opens and after the end of the period of display.

This time around due to time difference, virtual couriering took place quite early UK time and a little later in Australian time!

Once the objects are finished being displayed at a museum overseas, what steps are taken to return the objects, and bring them back to our collection?

The same thing happens but in the reverse order:

• Virtual couriering at the decant, which includes overseeing the packing of the frames back in the crate.
• Travel from Australia to UK.
• Arrive back at the National Science and Media Museum.
• Conservation team open crate to check condition of objects.
• Unmount and unframe the photographs.
• Load data loggers data.
• Rehouse and return objects to store and put the fairies to rest!