Wetaskiwin District Heritage Museum Centre & City of Wetaskiwin Archives

If any of you have been following our Facebook page or Instagram, you may have seen that we have removed our wall in front of the washrooms and moved the big crank organ. A big thank you to KelKenny Contracting for removing the wall while keeping our donation tree intact and replanting it in our gallery space. Once that wall was removed, we decided to try to clear up the space around the staircase, which meant moving one of our biggest and heaviest artifacts, a crank organ that has been in this museum, in that spot, since 2009. In this situation we examined the organ and saw that there was only one wheel, upon further inspection we realized that we could remove some pieces off the top of the organ and on the front as well to hopefully lighten up the load. While it did help, the organ was still heavy and difficult to move. After an hour-long struggle to move it 20 feet, it was finally in position. Once there the Collections Coordinator gave it a good clean using brush and vacuum technique, then put the organ pieces back. Although museums are still closed to the public due to Covid-19, the public should still come down to the museum to check out our gift shop and wool shop. We have recently got in some new items and you can also see how spacious our main floor gallery area is after the organ transplant