Moving Mountains:
Inside the McMichael’s Historic Collection Decantation

Wander through the McMichael on an average workday, and you might find conservator Tiziana in the lab, examining a painting under black light. A few rooms away, in what was until recently the Curatorial Office, Tech Services team member Tim is carefully matting works on paper, one by one. Follow the ramp down into the basement, and you’ll find Angelique and Hannah inspecting a custom crate before sealing it shut, then reporting back to Hanna, who is coordinating the next shipment to the collection’s secure temporary home. 

While the McMichael’s doors may be temporarily closed, an extraordinary amount of work is happening behind them. Every room repurposed, every spare hour claimed, in service of moving one of Canada’s great art collections out of a building that is about to become, for a few transformative years, a construction site. 

The process is called a decantation — the careful, systematic relocation of an entire collection — and the scale is staggering. To date, the team has moved 450 cartons, 300 crates and a total of 96,914 works.  

Every work must be individually condition-reported and documented before it can leave the building. Works are carefully measured and photographed; their condition is assessed and recorded; and any piece requiring conservation treatment is identified before it travels. Custom packaging is built for individual works, while specialized materials—including crates and solander boxes—are carefully prepared and organized for transport. From paintings and sculptures to works on paper, textiles, and the thousands of drawings held in the Kinngait Archive, every object has required its own careful journey. 

 It is, in every sense, a monumental undertaking. Staff have spent months photographing, measuring, inventorying, condition-reporting, matting, packing, crating and coordinating. There have been long days, intricate logistical puzzles, and more than a few moments requiring creative problem-solving. There has also been an extraordinary amount of care, collaboration, and good humour. As the handover date to the construction team approaches, we want to say what the numbers alone cannot quite capture: this is a remarkable achievement, carried out by a remarkable group of people. Our Collections, Conservation, Tech Services, and Library & Archives teams have given this project everything, and the collection is in extraordinarily good hands. 

To everyone involved: thank you. 

From the conservation lab to the paper vault, from the Kinngait Drawings Archive to the loading area, here are a few glimpses of the team at work—and of what it takes to move a collection of this scale.