At Arkona, Even Ancient Fossils Needed New Explanations

A fossil can remain unchanged while the explanation beside it grows old. At the Arkona Lions Museum and Information Centre, that was part of the problem volunteers set out to solve.

The collection had occupied its building above Rock Glen Falls since 1986. Decades later, volunteers reconsidered how its objects were identified, arranged and explained. [1]

The work around the object

Writing in the summer 2020 issue of Lambton Musings, museum contributor Glenn Stott described a renovation led by volunteer curator and steward Bob O'Donnell. New knowledge and discoveries had made changes to the displays necessary. In 2019 the Lions commissioned new cases from Peter Michielsen, a carpenter in nearby Sylvan. [1]

A museum of ancient things needed someone who could build something new.

The work also reached beyond the cabinets. Stott reported improvements to ventilation and security, and new washroom facilities and automatic doors installed by the Ausable Bayfield Conservation Authority. Sarnia artist Lauren Clark was commissioned to make four large paintings introducing the museum's subject matter. Other display changes were still under way while the museum was closed during the pandemic. The account describes work in progress, not a completed opening celebration. [1]

Mounts, names and a database

A separate conservation-authority account records the less conspicuous labour around the exhibits. Club volunteers made custom mounts for particular objects. Donations arrived from the London Gem and Mineral Society and individual collectors. Park superintendent Dale Cable helped with painting and the continuing care of the displays. [2]

The same account distinguishes completed improvements from a longer list of intentions. Brass identification tags, remounted displays and a volunteer-created computer database for photographs and collection information were among the planned work. It does not establish that every proposal was subsequently finished. [2]

These are small tasks only if the visitor never needs them. A mount determines how an object can be seen; an identification gives the visitor a starting point; a collection record helps preserve information that cannot be read from the object alone. The fossil is not the whole exhibit.

A collection reaches another town

By 2021, the work had a connection beyond Arkona. Sombra Museum acknowledged a donation of fossils from O'Donnell and the Arkona Lions Museum. In an August museum update, curator Kailyn Shepley described it as an opportunity to expand Sombra's collection into a new area. A photograph showed curatorial assistant Mara Garva holding a large specimen identified as fossil trilobite burrows, found in the Arkona area. [3]

It was not simply another cabinet in the same room. Material associated with Arkona had become something another community's museum could interpret.

Rock Glen's current conservation-area information places the museum alongside the landscape's Devonian fossils. The outdoor attraction and the indoor collection are connected, but their access is not interchangeable: the authority publishes a summer museum season, so an accessible park is not a promise that the museum doors will be open. Check its current information before travelling. [4]

The renovation's most revealing feature is the mixture of work involved: carpentry, painting, identification and record-keeping. None makes a fossil older or rarer. Together, they can make it more intelligible to the next person who stops in front of it.