BATON ROUGE – Tuesday morning, staff at the LSU Museum of Art were busy at work preparing to reopen their doors to the public, after a near-disaster caused them to close July 13.
The bizarre incident started when a water heater attached to a high-pressure line ruptured on the rooftop of the Shaw Center. The leak damaged walls and ceilings within the building, including four galleries inside of the museum.
Senior curator Michelle Schulte describes how her team scrambled to save the artwork throughout the 15,000 square foot space.
“Fortunately we have a really well-trained team, particularly our curatorial team and they were here immediately, taking down artworks and getting them out of the way of the water and protecting them really. We had a lot of tarping going on, a lot of buckets collecting the water, and fortunately we did not sustain any artwork damage,” Schulte said.
Tuesday when the museum resumed operations, those four galleries remained closed off with tarps blocking the entryways. Schulte estimates those areas will be off-limits to visitors for the next few months.
The Shaw Center itself sustained damage to the atrium, but all parts of the building are now open.
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