The Buffalo Nations Luxton Museum is set to reopen after a lengthy period of cleaning following an early February fire that destroyed an adjoining gun club cabin.
The Buffalo Nations Luxton Museum is set to reopen after a lengthy period of cleaning following an early February fire that destroyed an adjoining gun club cabin.
Completed by Norman Luxton in 1960 to house Aboriginal art and artifacts, the museum will reopen its doors to the public Friday (March 28) and a smudge ceremony will be held on Saturday (March 29) with Stoney Nakoda medicine man Glen Stevens, who will bless the building.
Angelika Eirisch, museum business manager, said Sunday (March 21) the museum had to be cleaned for smoke residue from top to bottom, floors refinished and carpets replaced.
“Every inch of that place has been sponged down. Every item and every corner, ” Eirisch said, adding 10 people were in the museum five to six days a week for over a month using dry sponges to remove smoke residue from the fire.
The Feb. 6 fire destroyed the cabin, moved to the site by Luxton, and damaged the outer timber wall, but flames did not get through into the museum itself.
“I don’t want people to get the impression that anything was damaged (in the museum). It just needed to be sponged down to clear out any smoke residue, ” Eirisch said.
Before the fire, museum staff had been hard at work for two weeks refinishing the floors following earlier repairs to fix the leaky roof and a makeover of the gift shop last year. The fire, however, meant floor work had to be redone.
“We have been making changes to the front of the house and we started making changes to the back. We have been renovating the floors and then the fire happened right when we were near finishing the floors and they had to be redone again, ” Eirisch said. “We just had new carpet put in three days before the fire and it all had to be replaced. We had almost finished the wood floor, our staff had put in a lot of hard work, but now we had a professional finisher come in because insurance covered it. ”
Some of the carpet has been removed altogether and the concrete floor has been painted, instead.
Eirisch said the fire was tragic, but it has given the museum a clean slate, allowing staff and the board to reorganize the museum, along with give it a deep cleaning, in co-operation with the Glenbow Museum, which owns a number of the artifacts on display.
“This whole two months, we’ve been moving things from one section to another. It’s quite a process: clean a room, move things into it. It’s been a very long process of moving things around, ” Eirisch said.
The Luxton Museum has been making great strides in the past few years. The board hired a grant consultant and is waiting on news of a $30,000 grant for interactive audio panels in five languages, including Nakoda.
“We have definitely been moving in that direction, but now have had to move a little faster because we had the opportunity to have a blank state with all the cleaning, ” she said.
The cabin, which is older than the museum, will be demolished and Eirisch said the board is planning to reconstruct it, but with no upgrades.
“The historical integrity will be kept. That was the board’s wish. That was the goal, we wanted to maintain it as it was before, ” she said.
Eirisch added the board has been discussing opening the reconstructed cabin to the public as part of the museum area.
“Part of that cabin might make an interactive exhibit where if someone is cleaning or maintaining an exhibit you see how it is done, ” she said.
The Luxton Museum is a charitable organization reliant on funds it raises through admissions, the gift shop, donations and grants.
It is open 365 days a year, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in winter.
