Exhibits: A whale of a tale at the ROM

by all | 14 September 2017 11:46 am

By Peter Saunders
In May 2014, the carcass of a blue whale—the largest animal known to have ever existed in the history of the world—was recovered from a beach in Trout River, N.L. The story made headlines around the globe, as it is exceedingly rare to find a full specimen of the endangered species. Also, when one is found, it is no easy matter to clean up.

The female whale’s 24-m (80-ft) long skeleton, comprising 350 bones, and 200-kg (440-lb) heart were salvaged and preserved under the auspices of Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), which finally put them on display this year for the public with Out of the Depths: The Blue Whale Story.

As the ROM developed a full exhibit to surround the skeleton, it turned to Toronto-based Holman to produce signs, graphics and fixtures for interpretive purposes.

“After two years of working on the shores of Newfoundland, the dedicated team at the ROM has brought to life, in actual scale, what it would be like to stand next to a real blue whale,” says Sakina Khawaja, Holman’s marketing director. “This exhibit was truly an honour to produce, showcasing this massive creature and paying tribute to an endangered species.”

Framing an exhibit
The process began when Holman responded 
to the ROM’s request for proposals (RFP) in November 2016. The two organizations had worked together in the past, but not within the past five years, so it was an opportunity for a new learning experience. Chris Marshall, Holman’s director of project management, visited the museum to conduct a site survey and to understand the full scope of the planned work.

“The RFP involved not only putting in the new exhibit, but also removing the old one first, which showcased the glass-based artwork of sculptor Dale Chihuly,” explains Leslie Roach, project manager for Holman. “We didn’t know how far along the whale bones were. We put in our costing and were selected five to 10 days later.”

Starting late that month, Holman worked with ROM project manager Jason French, as well as Research Casting International in Trenton, Ont., which was preparing the whale bones for display.

“We didn’t deal with any artifacts ourselves, but we fabricated and installed all of the casing and other components for displaying them,” says Khawaja, “and while the ROM team did all of the interpretive planning, we did get to suggest designs and ‘silhouettes’ for the exhibitry.”

“We were able to re-engineer the Chihuly exhibit’s platform,” says Roach. “We covered the top portion with acrylic and added theatre lighting. By rejigging the platform to support the massive weight of the whale skeleton, we avoided having to move it, saving time and money.”

The exhibit space itself was wide open, but the ROM would erect new temporary walls within it as needed, based on how visitor traffic was to be directed.

“About 75 per cent of the walls in the space would be new,” Roach says.

Fabricating graphics and components
As Holman began to fabricate all of the exhibit’s fixtures, sample units were sent along to the ROM for testing.

“They reviewed how everything would work,” says Roach, “and we figured out with them where we wanted everything to go.”

Meanwhile, the ROM team’s initial sketches and renderings were developed into detailed designs for the exhibit’s wide-format graphics.

“They had to use our templates,” Roach explains. “They couldn’t finalize the graphics’ designs until we had built the pieces that would display them.”

“I would say graphics comprised 40 per cent of the project,” says Khawaja. “There were hundreds of pieces in total.”

Among these were graphic pillars to identify each section of the exhibit, reader rails, heat-
bent polyvinyl chloride (PVC) foam-board directional signs, ‘stations’ with printed information, infill wall panel graphics, pre-mounted table graphics and a 1.4-m (4.5-ft) tall ‘milk carton’ to illustrate how much milk
a mother blue whale produces for its calf each day.

Holman has increased its in-house digital printing capabilities in recent years at its 3,716-m² (40,000-sf) fabrication facility. The table panel graphics, for example, were direct-printed onto polystyrene (PS) using a flatbed press, mounted on painted plywood and coated with an acrylic layer to protect them. For rear-mounted graphics, on the other hand, the images were printed on optically clear PVC films with a roll-to-roll (RTR) press, then mounted onto acrylic.

There were also digital and interactive elements. Bluecadet’s offices in New York, N.Y., developed a video game called Licence 
to Krill, for which Holman printed the housing’s graphics. In another area, the ROM set up a system to digitally project ultra-high-definition (UHD) ‘4K’ video onto a large wall.

Installing on-site and on-time
The installations began in February and continued through March.

“We made a lot of modifications in accordance with the on-site conditions,” says Roach. “Some of our signs couldn’t fit where we had planned to hang them, for example, because of the sheer size of the whale!”

In addition to Holman’s staff applying graphics, another company was brought in 
to install wall murals. The exhibit opened on March 11, just in time for families with children off school for March Break.

“Thousands of people came through that week,” says Khawaja.

“The show definitely shattered some records,” says Roach.

The exhibit was not complete when it opened, however, as the ‘plastination’ of the whale’s heart in Germany had not yet been finalized. It arrived at the ROM in May, providing a significant update to the exhibit in time for the Victoria Day long weekend, accompanied by more of Holman’s interpretive graphics. There have also been other graphic changes as new information is added to the exhibit.

“We have an ongoing relationship with the ROM and are always tweaking parts of the exhibit,” says Khawaja.

The exhibit finishes its current run this month (September), but may travel to other museums in the near future, requiring further graphic updates.

“We hope to be involved in those, too,” says Roach.

With files from the ROM, Holman and Bluecadet. For more information, visit www.rom.on.ca[8], www.holmanexhibits.com[9] and www.bluecadet.com[10].

Source URL: https://www.signmedia.ca/exhibits-a-whale-of-a-tale-at-the-rom/

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