ANN ARBOR—Before the University of Michigan Museum of Art moves temporarily for restorations, the public will be invited to say goodbye to some old friends that have graced the familiar spaces.

UMMA will undergo expansion and restoration from June through mid-2008. During that time, the museum will operate in temporary exhibition space at 1301 South University. In that 4,000 square-foot space, exhibitions will be mounted and a modest version of the Museum Store will open.

The museum in its present location is preparing for the construction work by systematically removing and securing its collections. The process will begin in mid-May and continue through June. A trailer filled with packing materials is now situated on the south side of the museum. Lori Mott, the museum’s registrar, is overseeing the packing and moving of the collections.” Everything has to leave the building,” she said.

Besides Mott, whose job as registrar is to keep track of every item in the museum’s collections, eight additional people are working eight hours a day to pack the works of art. Every piece of jewelry, every painting, the marble sculptures inside the entrance and a painting measuring 12 feet by 12 feet all have to be moved. Even” Daedalus” the metal sculpture on the front lawn of the museum, has to be moved. But Mott says not to worry. The piece will be coming back after construction and landscaping is completed.

The trailer parked outside the museum has materials at the ready for packing. It is full of core plastic boxes, rolls of foam and other materials that are approved for archive protection. All the materials are acid free.

Some of the collection items are too large to be moved from the museum through its loading dock and will have to be moved out through the front doors. U-M Moving and Trucking will be doing the heavy work.

“We’ve worked with them so long that they are just about experts on moving art,” Mott said. The collections will be moved to a secure location with climate control. Museum security officers will be stationed there.

Museum staff will be relocated to Rackham where there will be space for the conservation laboratory.

“We’ve been planning this for 18 months,” Mott said.” There’s a lot of pain and suffering now, but it will be so much better in the new building. We will even have a covered loading dock and a freight elevator.”

The” Goodbye Old Friends” program features docent-led tours through the museum’s various galleries. The tours are free and no advance registration is necessary. Tour dates are 7 p.m. May 18 and 2 p.m. May 21 and 28. As some of these exhibits are packed for storage, each tour will feature different” friends.” What is emphasized in the first tour may not be available for the second and third tours.

In the next few months, the Museum Shop will also be preparing for its move using a” cascading sale” beginning the first week of May. That week, select merchandise will be discounted 10 percent; the second week, 20 percent; and so on until the last week before the shop closes when select items will be discounted as much as 80 percent. New items will be featured at the shop’s new location on South University beginning June 25.

For more construction information, visit: http://www.umma.umich.edu/news/building-update.html