The challenge of moving whale skeletons suspended from the ceiling at the National Museum of Ireland.
The National Museum of Ireland - Natural History Museum in Dublin, often referred to as ‘The Dead Zoo’, was built in 1856 and houses a collection of over two million items. In 2020, as part of a €15 million plan to renew the roof, modernise facilities, and improve accessibility, the museum closed for renovations.
To facilitate the work, exhibits that have been on show for over a hundred years are being moved. One of the larger specimens is the skeleton of an Indian elephant, which died in Dublin Zoo in 1842. Curator at Paolo Viscardi explains the difficulties involved. The elephant skeleton is tall, so it can sway, and it is old,
An old bone doesn’t flex like a new bone does, so there’s a really good chance that when we move it the bone can explode, shatter, and brake.
Keeper of Natural History at the NMI, Nigel Monaghan, explains that the exhibits are being moved to facilitate the construction of a whale dismantling building site.
Before renovation work on the museum roof can begin, two large whale skeletons suspended from the ceiling must be dismantled. The bones belong to a fin whale found at Bantry Bay in County Cork in 1862, estimated to be about 20 metres long, and a juvenile humpback whale stranded at Enniscrone in County Sligo, in 1893.
Dismantling the whales involves removing the bones from the suspended metal frames that hold the skeletons together.
They’ve been up there for well over a century, so there's nobody to ask, 'how did you do it and what exactly is going on?’
Over the past decade or so, only a handful of people have done this type of work in other parts of Europe. Nigel Monaghan will be calling on the expertise of those who have this experience. The delicate process of dismantling the whale skeletons is scheduled to begin in September 2020.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 17 August 2020. The reporter is Philip Bromwell.
