How D.C.’s Museums Are Working To Protect Their Collections From More Heat And Flooding
September 19, 2019 | In the Press
Callie Stapp can literally see the impact of climate change on her office walls. Stapp is the curator of collections for Gadsby’s Tavern Museum, a historic 18th-century brick and wood building in Alexandria. “When the [wood]boards move and pop off the wall, I know it’s more humid outside,” she tells DCist. “Older, wood buildings react to that. We see movement and warping in the wood. We see paint lost. Climate change is definitely a day-to-day thing for us.”
Catastrophic weather events are undoubtedly posing immeasurable risks to museums and cultural institutions in the D.C. region and across the globe. But it isn’t just the longer-lasting hurricanes or the more extreme rainstorms that threaten to destroy the most important of our cultural treasures. It’s the everyday realities of climate change.
And D.C., with its plethora of museums, cultural institutions, and historic sites, may be particularly vulnerable. Not to mention, it’s getting hotter and wetter here.
Last month, the Washington Post published a harrowing report that said that while the United States on average has warmed one degree Celisus over the last 123 years, the District of Columbia has warmed by 1.5 degrees. Yes, D.C. is warming more quickly, on average, than the rest of the country. “We track humidity and temperature to historically look at changes [at our museum] over time. And we are definitely seeing more moisture and water issues [in the site and collections] than ever before,” says Stapp, who’s been with the museum for 18 years, “It’s terrible for our collections.”
According to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, there are about 120 museums in D.C. alone. There are many more in the surrounding Virginia and Maryland suburbs. The museums differ in size and drastically in content, from space history to bonsai trees, but they all house invaluable collections, artifacts, and archives. And climate change is providing tough new challenges for all of them on how to best care and preserve these treasures for generations to come.
Eleven Smithsonian museums are located on the National Mall, of which sections are in both the 100-year and 500-year floodplains. That means, theoretically, that there’s a one percent and .2 percent chance, respectively, of flooding in those areas in a given year.
Samantha Snell is a collections management specialist at the Smithsonian and chair of the Preparedness and Response in Collections Emergencies team. “Climate change is happening and we need to adjust with it,” says Snell, “We are preparing every day.”
Snell was hired to run the PRICE program and it began its work in March 2016. Their job is to make sure everyone at the Smithsonian—from collections staff to security to I.T. staff—is prepared to work together to protect their treasures in the case of an emergency, like a hurricane, a flood, fire, or anything that can put the collections at risk. Says Snell, “If we get to know each other and build relationships in the good times, when emergencies do happen we’ll be better prepared as a team.”
In anticipation of incidents like flooding, the PRICE team holds workshops and trainings for everyone who works at Smithsonian facilities. This training includes a workshop focused on wet salvage where they teach staff how certain materials react to water and how to handle them when they are wet. They even do an actual hands-on mock exercise. “Stunt double objects are floating in little pools,” says Snell, “And they learn how to document them, extract them from the water, and start triage.” In the winter, they do a fire recovery workshop where they recreate a collection storage space and, yes, light it on fire.
Snell says that the most important part of this is that everyone knows what to do and is properly trained to do their part in saving cultural treasures like the Star-Spangled Banner or the 1903 Wright Flyer in case of a massive flood or a catastrophic fire. “One of the biggest things PRICE does is to connect different disciplines and skills,” says Snell, “So, when there’s an emergency, we have a wealth of resources.”
In terms of day-to-day upkeep of the collection, Snell says that they work very closely with the engineering staff to observe the HVAC system and has a system that monitors the exact humidity and temperature of their collection storage every few minutes. They have back-up power generators in case the electricity goes out and have contingency plans for many different scenarios. Snell says the public can help by letting staff know when they see things that concern them, like someone putting a cup on a statue. Says Snell, “The public… should be reassured that the Smithsonian is taking care of their cultural heritage.”
The National Archives has had to put their own flood protection measures in place before. On the morning of July 8th, in the midst of the “most extreme flooding events in years,” the building’s flood controls activated. As water gushed towards the building, two eight-foot tall fiberglass floodgates installed in 2009 rose from the ground. Meanwhile, a sort-of floating concrete slab that the facility was built on in 1937 also helped to prevent the home of the Declaration of Independence from flooding. The protection systems were a success, a product of preparation and learning from the past. A 2006 storm caused millions of dollars of damage to federal buildings, including the basement of the archives.
“It definitely performed well,” says Tim Edwards, the National Archives’ facility manager, about the museum’s flood preventive measures this summer. Edwards, who’s worked at the National Archives since 1985, says they have adapted over the years as the needs have risen. Nonetheless, he harbors concerns about the next bigger, longer-lasting storm. “When we get that real big one, yeah, sure… I’d like [the floodgates] to be ten feet higher,” he says.
In order for museums to enact emergency preparations and day-to-day adaptations, there first has to be the acknowledgement that climate change is real, impactful, and needs to be dealt with urgently. This isn’t always the case, according to John Dichtl, president and CEO of the American Association for State and Local History, who says that museums need to make dealing with climate change, both the big weather events and day-to-day impact associated with it, a priority. When an institution isn’t located along a coastline or a flood-prone area, it can be tough to get the attention the subject deserves. Dichtl says that it comes down to competing for attention and resources.
“Museums have recently had to deal with so many issues…#MeToo, race, Confederate monuments. It’s a bandwidth issue,” he says. “Climate change is an everyday strain on buildings, infrastructure, and collections, but [many] museums in this country are pretty small. They’re just barely keeping the doors together as is.”
But some have recognized the need for action. According to Catherine Bade, the registrar at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the museum has elevated its disaster planning over the last five years with the understanding that flooding, climate change, and elevated humidity can be disastrous on an art collection. Bade is in charge of policies and procedures related to caring for the museum’s collection, which includes managing loans, insurance, and conservation.
While Bade feels comfortable with the museum’s planning, she knows that if a catastrophic storm hit the region they wouldn’t be the only museum scrambling. “All the available resources would be stretched,” she says. “[For example], all the shipping companies that would be coming to pick up your artwork and take it to a safe warehouse inland may not be available right away. They are also probably working with others who are going through the same things.”
Gatsby’s Tavern Museum had to put its own flood protocols to the test recently. On a January day in 2015, a sprinkler pipe burst at the building. Three years later, nearly to the day, it happened again in the two-century-old building during a particular brutal cold snap. While Stapp says these pipe bursts were more related to the building’s design flaw than climate change, it did have the same impact as storm-related flooding. “It’s a lot of water at once,” says Stapp. They quickly moved the delicate collections out, used a wet dry-vac,and removed water by the trash-can full. The museum was able to save their collections. But the museum’s most significant piece of history isn’t a piece of paper or a statute, but the tavern itself. And that just can’t be moved to a safe, dry, not-impacted-by-climate-change location.
“Some may say ‘the humidity, it’s just a blip this year.’ No. No, it’s not,” says Stapp. “The climate is currently affecting us now and going forward. It’s really tough on our museum.”
