UPPER WEST SIDE — It's a whale of a task.
The American Museum of Natural History is giving its famed 94-foot blue whale sculpture a dose of much-needed TLC — cleaning the 94-foot-long beast with the help of a massive lift.
Museum staff were hoisted into position high above the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life Wednesday and began wiping away two years of dust, using long-handled brushes and vacuums.
The polyurethane and fiberglass model of the largest creature on earth weighs 21,000 pounds — a mere drop in the bucket compared to the real thing, which tips the scales at up to 300,000 pounds.
Visitors at the museum were surprised to see the ground floor of the hall closed off while the mammalian makeover was in progress.
Many museum-goers thought that the beloved icon was being repainted because of the stark difference between the clean and dirty sections.
“They’re painting the whale,” a woman said to the 4-year-old she was babysitting.
When told that the whale was being only cleaned, she said: “Oh my goodness. That’s a lot of dust. That’s so unbelievable.”
Jane Hel, 27, of the Upper West Side, who came to the museum with her 2-year-old son, was surprised as well.
“It turns out that the shade that we usually see is not its real color,” she said. “They should do the cleaning up more often."
Museum staff said it was the first time they cleaned up the sea beast themselves, helping reduce the time for the work, which can take up to a week.
In the past, they have hired an outside company, which has to set up scaffolding before the work can be done.
Progress on the deep-sea dusting, expected to be finished within two days, is being live-streamed on the museum's website.
The whale model, based on a female blue whale found in 1925, has been the centerpiece of the hall since it was first installed in 1969.
