In 2016, NiS+TS member Barbara Lounder was awarded a research grant through the Nova Scotia Museum Commemoration Grant Program. Along with NiS+TS colleagues and student research assistants, and with guidance from staff at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic (MMA), she worked on “Locating the Mont-Blanc fragments in today’s city”. The MMA has over 50 fragments from the ship in its collection, and the objective of this project was to research, visually document, visit and geolocate the sites in and around Halifax and Dartmouth where they were found.
This research work eventually included listing and photographing additional Mont-Blanc fragments in museum collections in the city, such as the Dartmouth Regional Museum (Halifax Regional Municipality Archives), and the Naval Museum of Halifax (Admiralty House).
The Halifax and Dartmouth locations where fragments were known to have landed were mapped, and photographed by NiS+TS member Robert Bean during the Summer of 2017.
Photographs of 60 of the Mont-Blanc fragments, along with images of the corresponding locations, were shown at the Dalhousie Art Gallery from October through December 2017. This artwork, entitled Fragments and Locations: an incomplete inventory was in the exhibition Walking the Debris Field: Public Geographies of the Halifax Explosion. This work is currently on loan to the MMA for exhibition purposes in 2018-2019.
Two of the Mont-Blanc fragments have now been scanned, in preparation for 3D printing.
