Museum exhibitions that hang around long enough to wear the tag “venerable” can be problematic. How do you get people to visit something, say, a third time, to pay fresh attention to the artifact that is reliably sitting there in the metaphorical attic?
Thank heaven for anniversaries.
The Museum of Science and Industry’s U-505, a World War II German submarine ensconced in its own hall, will mark 75 years since its capture Tuesday.
In its honor there will be a new exhibit, “U-505 Submarine: 75 Stories,” that pulls some of the sub-related artifacts from the museum’s storage rooms and puts them before the public. If you were wondering how much leather German submarine officers wore on duty, this is your chance to find out. (Spoiler: A lot of leather, like Al Pacino-in-“Cruising” levels of leather.)
That special exhibit will be in the main museum rather than joining the storytelling that is part of the submarine’s custom-built exhibition hall.
For the longer term, so the remarkable vehicle will look sharp at its 100th capture anniversary and beyond, the museum has been refurbishing key parts of it, partly for the public tours through the vessel that are still popular but primarily for researchers who might want to visit some of the less accessible spots.
In a preview look at the artifacts being prepared for display and the work being done, I was impressed all over again with the richness of the U-505 story and the vividness of being on board.
Even on dry land, those narrow, low passageways make you rethink your feelings about claustrophobia; that efficient little kitchen might call to mind certain New York City apartments you’ve seen; those bunk beds hugging walls with weaponry stored on the floor in the middle will shame you for ever complaining about any sleeping situation you’ve ever found yourself in. Yeah, this tent is buggy and the air mattress is slowly deflating, but at least there’s not a torpedo right next to me.
It’s been at MSI practically forever — it arrived in 1954, and it moved indoors, into the bespoke building that surrounds it, in 2004 — but the U-505 is still a killer of an artifact worthy of its National Historic Landmark status.
“There are only, like, four U-boats in the world,” said Kathleen McCarthy, the museum’s director of collections and head curator. “This is the only Class IX one left.”
As she spoke from roughly the center of the submarine, specialists from the Evanston historical preservation firm Litas Liparini Restoration Studio were hard at work, as they have been for months, funded by a National Parks Service grant, working by evening and night, essentially starting as museum guests head home.
One man was up in the ship’s conning tower, installing the jigsaw puzzle pieces of a replica floor so that it might be safely visited by, for instance, naval historians. A woman was inside the museum’s collections area, working to repair an inflatable German lifeboat.
And Jane Foley sat on the floor in the aft torpedo room, working to reinstall the last of the repaired pieces, which look not unlike chunks of a ping-pong table. “We pulled out the whole floor bit by bit and vacuumed underneath,” she said. “That was interesting, the dust.”
Her team was coming to the end of its work. It had already restored the floor in the galley, which is part of the regular tour, and keen-eyed visitors might also notice that the dials and gauges look fresher.
The preservationists researched the original German navy color palette and restored the instruments to their original colors, while also replacing missing nuts and instrument pointers and the like as they would have looked when the sub was commissioned.
“It’s been quite a lot of attention to detail,” Foley said.
And, yes, she said, working at night in a room filled with bunk beds, she couldn’t resist the temptation to try one out. “I did try once and they're not comfortable, so I got straight off and got on with some work,” she said. “Plus, they’re too short for me.”
Meanwhile, in the artifacts room, curator Voula Saridakis had artifacts for the “75 Stories” exhibit laid out.
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“So much has already been told in the exhibit downstairs,” she said. “The idea is to shed more light on the actual sailors, the life of the sailors, both German and American, themselves, as well as a little bit more institutional history after it came to the museum. Most of the photographs and artifacts that we pulled out have rarely been seen by the public.”
So there is a set of wrenches from the U-505 alongside matches and cigarettes found on board the boat, plus an English-German dictionary. China from other German subs will be shown. And the museum has the log book from the U-505 detailing its travels, and its kills, before it was captured by the U.S. Navy near the Cape Verde Islands off Africa’s western coast.
The exhibit will also go into some of the commemorative events that happened during the post-war life of the submarine, moving meet-ups between German survivors, now U.S. allies, and some of the men who had captured them.
“My strength is more space history,” Saridakis said, “ and I learned so much about the U-505 on this project. It is a rabbit hole. There are so many amazing details that go into the history of the U-boat itself, but also the battle, the capture, and all the events and anniversaries that came after.”
Beginning Tuesday, the museum can add the 75th to that history of anniversaries and to the boat’s ongoing story.
sajohnson@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @StevenKJohnson
[ From 2014: At the MSI, 70th anniversary of capturing the U-505 ]