Inside the installation of 'From Rye to Raphael' at Walters

The first problem with moving the antique dragon fountain on display at the Walters Art Museum was that it's really, really large and really, really heavy: a 250-pound bronze behemoth that's about five and a half feet tall and three feet around.

The second problem is that the 19th-century artwork is irreplaceable, is awkwardly shaped and has about a zillion fragile protuberances that could snap off under just a small amount of misapplied pressure. The urn, which is at the Walters on a long-term loan from Towson University, shows a dragon perched on the rim of what appears to be a lotus flower. Its neck and back are arched and its teeth are bared. The needle-like scales bristle, the beast's claws dig into the blossom, and the dragon's tail curls sinuously around one of the urn's four slender legs.

Mike McKee, the Walters' senior art handler, couldn't imagine how he was going to get a grip on the thing, let alone carry it from the museum's galleries in the Hackerman House and down a flight of marble steps, and then into the museum's Centre Street building.

But curator Jo Briggs had her heart set on displaying the magnificent vessel in the big show opening Oct. 26 at the Walters Art Museum. McKee knew he couldn't let her down, so he got to work.

"You look at all the obstacles and you weigh all the possibilities," he said. "You calculate the weather, and you look at the bumps in the floor. But you can't plan for everything."

The Walters recently provided reporters with a rare behind-the-scenes look at the often-fraught installation process for its new exhibit, "From Rye to Raphael," which will celebrate the museum's 80th anniversary by examining the legacy of founders William and Henry Walters. (The "rye" in the exhibit name refers to the trade in rye whiskey that served as the basis of the family fortune.)

It takes lots and lots of pairs of gloves that are nitrate-free so they don't leave a deposit of powder on the artworks, custom-built cases, a textbook's worth of minute mathematical calculations, kilos of silica gel and plenty of human ingenuity to take a priceless artwork from its protective packaging and put it on display in an unpredictable public world.

The number of things that can go wrong are endless. For example, in 2011, a cleaning lady working in Germany's Museum Ostwall accidentally scrubbed away the patina on a $1.1 million sculpture by the late artist Martin Kippenberger.

"There's always a tension between preserving the objects and making them accessible," said Briggs, the Walters' assistant curator of 18th- and 19th-century art. "We want to keep the objects safe and keep them secure without putting too many barriers between the public and the art."

As Briggs describes it, collecting art was a contact sport for well-bred, wealthy folk in the early 20th century. Henry Walters and his "frenemy" J.P. Morgan constantly tried to one-up each other and engaged in the art world equivalent of trash talk.

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Inside the installation of 'From Rye to Raphael' at Walters