How do you move a whole museum-full of art?

Very slowly. Over the past 11 weeks, staffers and volunteers at the Taubman Museum of Art have been wrapping, boxing, crating and otherwise readying more than 2,000 artworks for the move from the museum's old quarters at Center in the Square to the new $66 million building two blocks away.

The move itself was conducted over the past two weeks with great secrecy and police protection to foil potential art thieves. The officers were hired off-duty to escort the movers and had no problems, Roanoke police spokeswoman Aisha Johnson said.

A team of professional art handlers moved the bulk of the collection across the Roanoke City Market to the new museum in a climate-controlled truck. The move was largely completed by Friday and was accomplished without damage to the art, Museum Collections Manager Mary LaGue said.

The artworks and artifacts ranged from $1 million paintings to artist Thomas Eakins' microscope to a collection of Judith Leiber handbags whose rococo ornamentation has been compared to Faberge eggs.

They now sit in climate-controlled storage at the new museum, while deputy director of art David Brown decides just where in the galleries to put them.

Before the professional art movers arrived, the preparation work was done primarily by LaGue, Assistant Registrar Andrea Hagy and a trusted group of volunteers, many with backgrounds in practical problem solving rather than the realms of art, LaGue said.

"We've got a fair amount of engineers," LaGue said earlier this summer. "We've got architects and people with architectural training. A lot of left-brain folks."

Before they got started, LaGue let them know the rules for moving art: "You have to plan everything. You have to have an awareness zone around you. You plan as far in advance as you can to minimize surprises."

And you don't move anything twice if you can help it. "Every time you move something, you're vibrating it and putting it in danger," she said.

Volunteer Charlie Hall, an IBM retiree and longtime museum volunteer, recited several other rules: Don't touch the surface of a painting. No knuckles on the backs of the canvas -- it can make a bulge that's visible from the front. Wear gloves when handling works on paper or sculptures to protect them from the acids in human skin.

The volunteers began toiling way back in June, swathing almost every artwork in a protective covering. Crates were built to the dimensions of paintings. Molds were carved to fit fragile curves, with nearly as much care as the artists lavished on the works themselves.

Valuable canvasses were mounted into the custom-built crates on little hinged brackets known as Oz clips, which hold the painting away from the sides of the crate and also help it absorb shocks. Every artwork was given its own bar code and a colored Post-it note to indicate which gallery it was bound for.

Sometimes, keeping track of some 2,000 artworks proved overwhelming.

Asked if they ever had to unwrap something they had just wrapped because they forgot what it was, volunteers Hall, Henry Ayars and Ralph Thomas answered in unison:

"Yes."

The pros arrived Aug. 25. Artex Fine Art Services has offices in multiple cities and counts Washington's National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York among its clients, according to a company release.

The Artex team brought a climate-controlled truck and some useful materials, including a couple of lifts and some plastic called Tivar, which is nearly crush proof and slippery as ice.

"Any material will slide on this," said Artex team leader Ivo Morales of the hard, white stuff. Morales, a broad-shouldered one-time Guatemalan forest ranger, has moved art for the National Gallery and handled Picassos and Monets.

One of the Roanoke museum's most prized artworks -- a 7¹₂-foot ornately framed portrait of Norah Gribble by the 19th century American painter John Singer Sargent, was taken off the wall by four Artex workers, including two standing on ladders. It was first placed on a custom-made pad on the floor, then loaded into a custom-made case for its journey across the market.

Of course, all the care in the world can't reduce the possibility of an accident to zero -- can it?

"Everybody's human," Morales said with a grin when asked about accidents.

Though police officers escorted the art to the new museum, in between trips it was apparently business as usual. Artex workers quickly found out they could not leave their truck unattended near Center's freight elevator, Morales said.

They got a parking ticket.

Staff writer Amanda Codispoti contributed to this report.