Pest management

Within a gallery devoted primarily to costume and textile items, the
exhibits department of our museum intends to display as an exhibit
prop a large bale of used clothing and other textile items which is
being donated by the local Goodwill (approximately 6'X3'X3' and
weighing 1400 lbs.).  Goodwill bales those donated items deemed
unsaleable in their store locations. Knowing neither the
"provenance" of the items compressed within the bale nor their
condition (clean/dirty or dry/damp), I have some reservations about
introducing it into the gallery environment if it might potentially
be infested with pests of some kind.  We have wondered about the
possibility of having the bale fumigated somehow but in initial
telephone queries have had no success locating a source for this
service.  In the absence of fumigation, as a minimum measure we are
considering accepting the donated item only as far as our loading
dock where we could place sticky traps and other standard monitoring
stations nearby for a period of days or weeks to see if we trap
anything before declaring the bale "clean" and safe to introduce
into the gallery.

Are we overly concerned? is there a typical source for fumigation of
large items? if so, what methods or fumigating agents are suggested?
if the temporary "quarantine" were used, given what might be the
pests of logical concern (case-making moths, silverfish, bed bugs,
crickets) is there a minimum amount of time we should allow for
random trapping of specimens?

Any suggestions, advice, or guidance on display of this somewhat
unusual "artifact" is welcome either on or off list.

Ken Myers
Site Manager
Valentine Museum
1015 E. Clay Street
Richmond, VA  23219
804-649-0711  Ext. 320
Fax: 804-643-3510


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 13:41
                Distributed: Thursday, January 27, 2000
                       Message Id: cdl-13-41-024
                                  ***