A successful grant application means The Exploration Place won't have to shrink its collection.
Funding from the Northern Development Initiative Trust in the amount of $202,000 will cover about half the costs for the museum's Condensed Collections: Just Add Wheels project - installing mobile racks to increase its collection space by more than 70 per cent.
"This is simply fantastic news," said museum CEO Tracy Calogheros in a press release.
"This new project will essentially be an internal expansion, buying the museum many years of breathing room before bricks and mortar considerations are necessary all the while maximizing the use of our existing space."
The project will involve packing and moving out the museum's entire collection, removing a few internal walls, installing the mobile racks and then reinstalling the holdings.
The Exploration Place was over capacity in its collections spaces, meaning without the grant it would have had to either gas some of its collection or begin turning away donations.
Final plans for purchasing will be made over the summer with the project scheduled to begin in early October, wrapping up next spring.
"One of the largest tasks will be to re-describe the locations for the items in the collection once they are re-shelved," Calogheros said.
"Our digital database tells researchers and curators precisely where each object and document is located in collections and all of those locations will have changed."
Additional funding for the more than $400,000 (including staff time) project has been applied for through the B.C. Arts Council - Capacity and Sustainability Fund and Calogheros said she intends to find the rest in the museum's existing operating budget.
