A museum is urgently seeking a new owner for its Curtiss Model F Seagull
The Seagull needs to be removed from its current home, the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa.
The museum states: As part of our current work to prepare the Canada Aviation and Space Museum for the arrival of a Buffalo CC-115 aircraft from the Department of National Defence and preparations for a new Cold War exhibition, Ingenium is assessing the appropriate placement and locations of our aircraft to best reflect the revised scope of our exhibition spaces. Ingenium continuously reviews its artifacts to ensure that they best represent Canada, our history and significant technological contributions. This includes a rigorous collection review, which involves recommendations to deaccession an artifact or object when it no longer fits the scope of our national collection. As part of this review, it has been decided that the Curtiss Seagull will be deaccessioned from the collection. Ingenium is actively in conversations with interested Canadian institutions to find the Seagull a new home.
The museum's Seagull was manufactured in 1920 by Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company. Between 1924 and 1925, it was used to conduct an aerial survey of the Parima River headwaters in Brazil's Amazon region. It was donated to the Science Museum in London and was damaged in a bombing raid in 1941. Initially on loan to the Canadian museum, it became part of the collection in 1968 when it was exchanged for a Douglas Dakota nose section. The Seagull was restored by the museum's conservation team between 1970 and 1974.
