Home, sweet home.  In today’s third and final post, Shannon and Caroline look back on Golden Boy’s big move.

Moving Day at last! Our Golden Boy is ready to take up residence in the West Building Egyptian Gallery.

Bright and early on February 16, our beloved glittery hero was escorted from Art Storage, in the old East Building, to the new gallery by an entourage of 12 people. TWELVE! GB’s personal assistants included one curator, two art handlers, one registrar, one conservator, one conservation assistant, one exhibition designer, one mountmaker-installer, one photographer, and one webmaster-videographer . . . Oh! Mini-Mummy-Me was there, too!

The entourage made certain Golden Boy had all his personal belongings before departing. Pectoral piece. Check. Apron. Check. Soles. Check. Plaques of protective deities. Check. Helmet. Wait! Where’s the helmet? For safety the blue helmet traveled on a separate gurney from the rest of the pieces, which were already secured on the mummy.

After a long trip down the art tunnel and up the art lift, Golden Boy was ready to be installed in his new home by his unusually large entourage. That’s a lot of people to squeeze into a small gallery already full of casework and other objects, so the work required some delicate choreography. First we gave Golden Boy his helmet back (he was relieved; he was afraid of not being able to see, hear, and talk in the afterlife). Then we placed GB and his designer mummy mount into the display case and made sure the whole thing was centered.  To keep Golden Boy stable and safe, we secured the mummy mount to the backboard using long bolts. This required a bit of finagling by our mountmaker-installer (it looked like a scene from a cheesy horror flick), but we got it done.  We replaced Golden Boy’s pectoral to cover the hole where the bolts were hidden.

Finally, the case was closed with a custom-made vitrine, and we all stepped back to admire our work. (Mini-Mummy-Me gave us a standing ovation.) Golden Boy and his new designer mummy mount were finally home. Congrats to the whole team!

So, once Team Golden Boy had decided on an abstracted “mummy” mount for our Gilded Mummy Covering, and we had a scale model to show us how that mount might work (we call him Mini-Mummy-Me!), we looked around to see who else might have had the same idea. We discovered that the Brooklyn Museum of Art has a mummy covering in their collection that is displayed just the right way, and we got in touch with them to see how they did it.

Conveniently enough, I was making a trip up to NYC to visit a friend right around the time we discovered our mini-mummy’s bigger cousin, so I convinced my traveling companion to stop by the BMA to take a look. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to see the object outside of its case–the conservator’s schedule did not align with my time in Brooklyn. Nonetheless, the BMA allows non-flash photography, so we took some photos that (I hope) were helpful in developing our final design for the faux mummy mount.

(Also, I like to think that Mini-Mummy-Me had a good time traveling around NYC–he got to fly with me on the plane, and meet some long-lost relatives, and he even got to cross the Brooklyn Bridge!)

The staff at the BMA was also very generous in sharing information about their process and materials, so with our photos and their expertise, our ingenious Conservation Tech, Stacey Kirby, was able to formulate a plan of action for making our own mummy mount.

(Check out earlier episodes from the Adventures of Golden Boy, and be on the lookout for more, as Golden Boy prepares for his debut in the new building.)