Cleaning Tiny Rooms

The National Arts Centre Archives are the home not just to documents pertaining to the history of the organization and its cultural outputs, but also physical artefacts produced by each department. Housed within the NAC Archives are a number of Theatre Maquettes – physical replicas of set designs used as support tools for teams staging theatrical works.

Maquettes are important windows into the design of a production – all the more important where photographic evidence of a production may not capture the details of a set’s design. But they can also take up physical space in archives, collect dust over time, and even need some gentle maintenance for longer-term preservation. Sometimes they are not properly documented and described in archival records, rendering them inaccessible to communities that might be interested in accessing them for research and study.

In the Winter 2025 session, students in the Master of Information Studies program (at the University of Ottawa) embarked on a collaborative project with the NAC's archival team to conserve maquettes from English and French Theatre productions. 

Scroll through this exhibit to learn more about the maquettes and students' conservation work.