Executive Editor

When operations manager Josh Holderbaum was checking one day on parts of the 20,000 item natural history collection at Kingman Museum in Battle Creek, he noticed something was wrong.

“We're having major issues with climate control and humidity control in our collection storage rooms,” he said. “So as we're moving we're disposing of quite a few objects that have succumbed to mold, mildew and degradation.”

Even worse, said Kingman Museum Board Member and Communications Chairperson, Annie Kelley, there was standing water.

“They have storage for collections down in the basement,” she explained, “and that’s where the water is leaking into. And I say leaking but I think it was more like some flooding.”

Kelley confirmed that the collection is already being packed up to be moved out of the 89-year-old 175 Limit Street building which the 150-year-old collection was moved into 87-years ago after construction was completed in 1933.

Last week, she crafted a letter to the community, many members of which have grown up getting its natural history lessons from the bones of a sabre tooth tiger, the massive, taxidermy Polar Bear, the dinosaur bones, the fossils, taxidermy birds - like the now extinct Ivory Billed Woodpecker and even the human fetuses.

“Three generations of my family have all visited here and the building is an exhibit all by itself,” Mark Porter wrote on the museum’s Facebook page.

The museum, located on the grounds of Leila Arboretum, has three levels of science exhibits covering everything from biology to paleontology plus a planetarium and gift shop.

Over the years, the museum has kept admission based hours, held educational programs, community events such as the Art and Science of Beer and Chocolate, Spooky Science Saturday and The Transit of Venus viewing party in 2012, and, has taken the show on the road to classrooms and fund raisers.

“In partnership with the Battle Creek Community Foundation, we’ve found suitable locations for storage and will be hiring professional movers,” Kelley wrote to the community in an online newsletter. “The moving process is difficult, not only with the usual headaches of packing things up, but also cataloging individual items to ensure they are easy to find when they are temporarily warehoused.”

While she declined to identify a new location for some of the more fragile items until a formal agreement is reached with an existing organization, Kelley did say that the less fragile items will temporarily go to the Burma Center, located in the former Springfield High School building.

“As we move forward with deciding next steps, we'll keep you in the loop,” Kelley wrote. “Our goal is to keep these unique items -- from the polar bear to the meteorite -- in the community for years to come.”

In the end, the hope is that a new building that can be used to get everything back under one, climate controlled roof, can be acquired.

Currently, an appeal to local, major donors is underway, she said.

“Our main goal is to preserve the collection itself, and we've realized that isn't possible in our current location because 20 to 30 years of much-needed improvements and restorations were put off,” said Holderbaum. “We're not sure what will happen to the building. We're exploring the possibility of relocating the museum itself, and the building is owned by the City so ultimately it will be their decision but we'd like to help with that process as much as we can to find a new usage for the building, since it is historic and everyone loves it.”

According to Kelley, the collection was once owned by Battle Creek Public Schools and was later turned over to an independent entity that ultimately became known as the non-profit organization, operated by a board of directors and its staff.

That entity at one time entered into a contract with the city of Battle Creek that it would be the custodians of the building.

Now, the two parties are discussing the building’s future, said Kelley.

“This is a chance to re-imagine the museum: to mix tradition with modernity, to create a contemporary context for a stellar collection, to not be quite so static,” said Kelley, adding that it’s all being done with help from the Battle Creek Community Foundation. “We want to be better than ever for that fourth generation and beyond.”

She added that making exhibits more interactive is among the goals, along with finding a space that allows for more events.

“Eltine is doing some brainstorming about ways we can be using the entire collection,” said Kelley of Kingman Museum executive director, DeYoung.

The doors to the building have been closed to the public since the onset of the COVID-19 disease pandemic last March.

“Staff have continued with education programs and assessing items in the collections,” said Kelley. “One example is (education director) Emily Powell's current science lessons for Battle Creek Public School students. Once COVID doesn't pose quite such a threat, we'll look into pop-exhibits while making plans for how to get the collections back to full-scale display in a safe environment. Nothing has been deaccessioned, which is what happens when a museum closes. Although some items will have to be thrown out because of damage.”

It was after the building closed to the public this year that Holderbaum had time to really dig in to the stored collections, said Kelley.

After the damage was discovered, the museum consulted structural repair professionals and obtained some repair estimates, said Kelley.

“It would be very, very expensive,” said Kelley, “too expensive to repair.”

The top level of the museum was renovated after a capital campaign 10 years ago, Kelley confirmed, but those items were permanently placed and could not be rotated in and out.

“The exhibits stayed and the stuff in storage, people didn’t get to see so we want to make sure we’re using the entire collection for the community as well,” said Kelley. “Next year, we hope to do some pop up exhibits and we want to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the collection, even if it’s online.”

As for the planetarium, the equipment was going to have to change no matter what, because the technology has aged out, said Kelley.

It was unreliable even before the pandemic,” she said. “There’s actually another option the museum staff is interested in called a Sphere. It provides an interactive experience that wouldn’t have to stay in one spot -- staff would be able to take it on the road to schools or for events. It has programming for space, environmental and earth sciences.”