Natural History Museum 'Great Canoe' Moved For 1st Time In 60 Yrs
January 28, 2020 | In the PressFrom Patch (https://patch.com/new-york/upper-west-side-nyc/natural-history-museum-great-canoe-moved-1st-time-63-yrs)
A giant canoe that has been in the same spot at the American Museum of Natural History since the 1960s was moved on Tuesday as one of the final touches to a years-long renovation of the hall where it will now be featured.
Museum staff moved the 63-foot canoe on Tuesday morning from the Grand Gallery, where it has been since 1960, back to the Northwest Coast Hall, where the 19th-century boat was featured back in the early 1900s.
The relocation is one of the final touches in a major renovation project for the Northwest Coast Hall, which museum staff first announced in 2017.
The project updated the hall and took on a major restoration of its Northwest Coast collection, which is one of the largest collections of 19th-and early 20th-century art and material culture from the Northwest Coast in the world.
The "Great Canoe" is linked to the the Heiltsuk and Haida Nations of the Pacific Northwest and is one of the largest dugout canoes in existence, according to the museum.
It was made from a single Western red cedar tree around 1878, and may have been used as a dowry payment, a history on the museum's website says.
"Oral traditions link it to both the Heiltsuk and Haida peoples, with stories suggesting it was at first unadorned, with the killer whale, raven, and figurehead sculpture of a sea wolf added later," the history writes.
The canoe joined the museum's collection in 1881 as part of the larger Bishop-Powell collection acquired by Trustee Heber Bishop.
The full restoration of the Northwest Coast Hall is expected to be done in the spring of 2021.
The project's artifact restoration component is led by the Division of Anthropology's Objects Conservation Laboratory and will conserve more than 1,000 items from the Northwest Coast collection.
