The Na­tion­al Mu­se­um shuts its doors to the pub­lic to­day to un­der­go some much-need­ed ren­o­va­tions.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to reach Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell, Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) chair­man Noel Gar­cia and the Na­tion­al Trust for fur­ther de­tails on the scope of the project yes­ter­day but all at­tempts were un­suc­cess­ful.

How­ev­er, speak­ing at the launch of the Pa­tri-Art-Ism Art Ex­hi­bi­tion at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter Mitchell re­ferred to the “soon-to-be re­fur­bished Na­tion­al Mu­se­um,” which will con­tin­ue to host the work of lo­cal­ly en­trenched and up-and-com­ing artists.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the mu­se­um and found a tour­ing mem­ber of the pub­lic and it was not dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand why the re­fur­bish­ment works were be­ing un­der­tak­en.

There were sec­tions which ap­peared to be new­ly re­ju­ve­nat­ed, such as the Caz­abon show­case and the sec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to the first in­hab­i­tants of the is­land.

How­ev­er, while the ex­hibits told the sto­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s peo­ple and cul­ture, the still hu­mid­i­ty sur­round­ing them told the tale of a bro­ken air con­di­tion­ing sys­tem, which Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands is a peren­ni­al is­sue. Some ex­hi­bi­tions were al­so closed off, leav­ing be­hind an emp­ty room. It was ex­plained dur­ing the tour that they were ei­ther closed, packed up in prepa­ra­tion for the re­fur­bish­ment works or, in one sec­tion, be­cause the room was threat­en­ing to col­lapse due to ter­mite dam­age.

Some of the an­i­mal ex­hibits al­so saw bet­ter days. For in­stance, one of the stuffed mon­key’s faces was turned away from the view of the pub­lic. It was ex­plained that it de­te­ri­o­rat­ed over the years. It was a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion with one of the bats.

In all, while the build­ing did not ap­pear, at least in the pub­licly ac­ces­si­ble ar­eas, to be in a se­ri­ous­ly de­crepit state, it may not hurt for it to re­ceive some TLC.