MONTREAL, June 1, 2012 /CNW Telbec/ - In the wake of the May 29 flooding, the Musée is temporarily closed, until June 11, 2012, and will be open once again starting Tuesday, June 12.
Efforts over the past 72 hours to empty, clean and decontaminate the flooded basement have amounted to a race against the clock. Specialized maintenance teams have been busy night and day in the 50,000-square-foot space affected, and archival and restoration staff members are on hand to speed up the artwork restoration process. On every floor of the building, teams are helping each other out in this emergency situation.
The scale of the job at hand, coupled with the space restrictions, means that we must take over every available space to accommodate works brought out of storage areas. With the entire premises - including exhibition galleries, public spaces, workshops and the Media Centre - being required for this purpose, we have decided to close the Musée to the general public until June 12.
Since the flood occurred, the museum community has spontaneously come to our aid in exceptional fashion. A large restoration team from Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Canadian Centre for Architecture, along with a number of private conservators, have come to the aid of our team, helping them remove artworks from the storage areas and restore them as needed. While no pieces have been irretrievably lost, a multitude of cleaning, drying and decontamination operations have been performed - especially for artwork executed on paper. An assessment will follow in the next few days. We thank the entire museum community for its support, visitors and journalists for their understanding, and the general public for its messages of encouragement.
Danielle Legentil, MACM
Director, Communications
[email protected]
Phone: 514 847-6236
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