Last chance to visit the Naval Museum of Halifax before 2-year closure

The Naval Museum of Halifax is getting ready for a two-year closure for renovations and upgrades.

Workers and volunteers are already hard at work bundling up books, packing artifacts, and finding places to store everything that is currently on display at the Naval Museum of Halifax. They are preparing for a two-year closure to add new exhibitions and renovations.

“For the most part the renovations are limited to sort of regular maintenance, the windows, repointing the masonry, and some infrastructure work in our facility, ” says Jennifer Denty, director of the Naval Museum of Halifax.

The museum itself has been around for 50 years. Denty says it opened in 1974 and their collection dates back to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, which was established in the Halifax dockyard in 1948.

“We are one of five navy museums across the country and it is our mission to bring the history of the Royal Canadian Navy from ship to shore and celebrate the experiences of our naval personnel as well as our fleet in action,” says Denty.

The building itself has been around for over 200 years so a facelift is necessary. Discussions about renovations have been in conversation for years. Denty says they are looking forward to these upgrades as it will preserve the home for many years to come.

“We actually planned to do the permanent exhibit project two years from now, but we took a look at the timeline for that exhibit and we took a look at the timeline for the renovation project and we thought there is no point in closing twice, so we found a way to pair it up with the renovation project,” says Denty.

The museum will officially close to the public starting Thursday – almost a month earlier than they planned.

“We wanted to be able to maintain public operations until the Battle of the Atlantic Sunday, which is such an important day for the history of the navy and the naval community. Unfortunately, the level of detail and space required to pack our collection has just meant we are slowly starting to impact visitation,” says Denty.

It’s quite the process to pack everything up. The walls must be bare, removing pictures, pulling artifacts from cases, as well as finding storage space for everything to go during the renovations.

“For example we have about 900 pairs of pants, those are really easy to pack and move, we have about 130 ship models, and so you sit down and look at that and think I have 130 ship models, what am I going to do with these? Where are they going to go? So we take a look at offsite storage and what can that accommodate. Then we look at space around the base to store artifacts where they can still be accessible to our designated community,” adds Denty.

Denty says the first four months of the renovation will be packing everything up, and then the last six months will be unpacking and rehoming the artifacts in their new spaces.

“We are going to have a whole new exhibit, which will be on this floor and make more of our facility and exhibits accessible. As you go upstairs, we are going to have a brilliant spread on our World War II story, we are actually going to talk about Korea,” she says.

One exhibit that will not be returning in its same capacity is the Halifax Explosion. It will be combined with another exhibition, creating something new altogether.

“We are going to get into the pre-unification, Cold War experience up until the unification and then we have planned a huge timeline of the history of the dockyard all the way from our second deck all the way until the basement,” says Denty.

Denty says, to develop a single exhibit typically takes between six months to a year. For this project, they will be creating two floors worth of exhibits in two years, so the basement will be put on pause during this renovation period.

“So, the basement won’t be reopening when we reopen to give us a little bit of a chance to wrap our heads around the research. Because that will actually be the 1970 history up until Operation Apollo in 2001, it’s a more modern experience because one of the things we really noticed as we are studying who’s coming and what they are seeing is that our more modern veterans are looking for themselves in the museum,” explains Denty.

“And everyone loves our World War II content, our World War I content, but people are trying to find themselves in the space and we currently don’t talk about that. So that’s one of the areas that we are really looking forward to developing in our basement is to come back with that modern veteran experience.”

Despite the space itself being closed, staff will be out in the community, whether it’s developing their programs or attending festivals.

For those looking to visit before it closes, there is still a bit of time left. The museum will be closing to the public Thursday.

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