Sequim Museum & Arts grand opening
When: 11 a.m. Saturday, July 6
Where: 544 N. Sequim Ave.
More info: www.sequimmuseum.com, SequimMuseum@olypen.com, 360-683-8110
It’s less than 10 days before the grand opening of Sequim Museum & Arts’ new facility, and Judy Reandeau Stipe is a flurry of activity inside more like a big band director than an executive director.
“We’re working fifty hours a week — we didn’t even do that when we were really working,” she jokes.
“It’s been a labor of love.”
More than six years after joining the board, Stipe and a horde of volunteers are on the cusp of finishing a long dreamt-of reception to officially open the Cowan Complex Center — a 6,500-square-foot building to house the museum’s array of local artifacts, art, displays, interactive exhibits and more.
“I’m really proud of how this is coming out,” Stipe said last week, standing amidst a half-dozen projects with painters, carpenters and other volunteers buzzed by.
Museum volunteers welcome the public to a grand reception on Saturday, July 6, an event to include special guest Matt Dryke, gold medalist from the 1984 Olympic Games.
Other special guests include photographer Ross Hamilton, “Strait Press” author Bill Lindstrom with Brown Maloney, and the museum’s board of trustees.
Thereafter, the facility will be open 11 a.m.-4 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday, with private tours by appointment.
Admission rates are still being figured out, Stipe said, but the staff will be accepting donations.
Stipe listed dozens of individuals and businesses who have either donated money, time, in-kind services or all three: Dan Smith and the Nolan family for wood donations, Larry Somerville and her husband Bob Stipe for various woodworking projects, Bob Lampert for photo donations, and contributions and discounts from a multitude of business, including Lakeside Industricts, Hartnagel Buidling Supply, Clear Image, Doghouse Powder Coating and Clallam Co-op Farm and Garden, among others.
A big thanks, Stipe noted in months past, were workers who allowed the museum to take several loads of wood from the former Sequim Elementary School — and most recently the Sequim Community School, which was deconstructed last year.
The 20-foot-long, 16-inch-wide, 2 3/4-inch thick pieces of old growth timber — 30 in all — line the new museum
“‘How did we do this?’ It’s easy. It’s all these people standing behind us,” Stipe said.
Making the move
The origins of Sequim Museum & Arts dates back more than 40 years. Stipe note in the spring edition of “The Prairie Review,” the museum’s quarterly newsletter, that “farm artifacts, old bones or logging stuff were dropped off with the town clerk when locals paid utility bills” at the Sequim Town Hall, where Gladys Holmes and Ruby Trotter stacked relics on desks, shelves, in a utility closet — and later opened the jail cell for historical display (prisoners where no longer kept in town, Stipe notes).
In the mid-1970s when a group of community members on a bicentennial committee developed the idea of starting a community museum. After a couple of years of exhibiting in several locations around town, the community cut the ribbon for the Sequim-Dungeness Museum on May 10, 1979, at 175 W. Cedar St. — on the site of the former Sequim post office.
In 1992, the museum merged with the Peninsula Cultural Arts Center to become the Museum & Arts Center in the Sequim-Dungeness Valley. Three years later the organization grew once again, acquiring the historical, two-story Dungeness Schoolhouse on Towne Road.
The schoolhouse is a rentable venue for community use. Thanks to various groups using the building for reunions, musicals and plays, weddings and birthdays, yoga, table tennis, homeschool lessons and more, Stipe said the organization is able to pay for its four facilities (the schoolhouse itself, plus the Cedar Street exhibit center, museum administration building and the new Cowan complex).
Stipe joined the museum board about six-and-a-half years ago and along with others began the groundwork for the new facility. Albert Haller, a longtime Sequim logger, lad developer and later an education advocate before his death in 1992, purchased the land on North Sequim Avenue to someday house a museum.
In March of 2016, the museum got a big boost toward the new facility when they received and sold three properties courtesy of land endowments from West End pioneer John Cowan and his wife Inez — including two timber properties on Lake Ozette Road and off Highway 112, and a home in Port Angeles.
Despite some proverbial bumps along the way, Stipe credited a number of local government officials with helping with the process — in particular City of Sequim operations manager Ty Brown, utilities manager Pete Tjemsland, Community Development Director Barry Berezowsky and former assistant city manager Joe Irvin, among others.
“I’m over the moon,” Stipe said. “The biggest thing for me is it’s (done) the Sequim way. It makes me cry sometimes.”
Exhibits and features
Museum officials bring plenty something old (from the previous exhibit center) along with some things new to the Cowan facility.
A section of the museum heralds former Sequim resident Joe Rantz and fellow members of the Olympic Games gold medal-winning member of the 1936 University of Washington crew team. Judy Willman, one of Rantz’s daughers, donated larger-than-life photo boards of the team members. Complimenting the section is the George Pocock rowing shell gifted to the Sequim museum by the Olympic Peninsula Rowing Association in 2015; previously supported near ground level, the shell hangs from the new facility’s rafters.
A new feature to the museum’s traditional offering of artist space is the Judith McInnes Tozzer art gallery featuring her own art with others from Joy McCarter’s piece on the grain elevator to Dale Faulstich’s Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe-inspired artwork. Each month the gallery will be open for community artists to display their work (a fee applies), Stipe said.
A section of the museum will be labeled the Albert Haller Library. Named after Haller, an lifelong advocate of education whose foundation Stipe says was a tremendous support in getting the facility built, the section of the museum will also house a “children’s corner.”
Two murals from the originally installed on the Lehman’s grocery storefront from 1995-2000 make their way into the museum exhibits as well.
Visitors will get a chance to peer into the area’s logging history with an exhibit that showcases antique logging equipment and a wall-sized photo of the Dungeness Logging Company’s haul via the railway.
A milk “parlor” spotlights artifacts from Sequim’s long history as a dairy area — including a life-sized cow replica.
A large, garage-style sliding door allows museum volunteers access to bring in antique tractors, cars and the like, such as the museum’s 1907 REO Runabout.
Other features include restored theater chairs from the Sequim Opera House and signs from businesses come and gone, such as “Southwoods Mall” and “Sofie’s Grill,” along with signs declaring “We’re Rollin’ to Nolan’s, Best Ice Cream in the Valley” and “Welcome to Flipper Drive In.”
A section not expected to be completed by the grand opening will feature t ibal artifacts and more from the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, Stipe said.
Returning is the ever-popular Manis mastodon exhibit, the showcase of Emanuel (“Manny”) and Clare Manis’ archaeological dig that rewrote human history in North America. The museum will have mastodon-inspired shirts for sale, Stipe said.
Community groups and school children Chimacum, Whidbey Island, Shelton and other communities visit the Sequim museum, Stipe said, and most of the come for the mastodon display.
“We are asking everyone to overlook some unfinished items because construction is ongoing,” Stipe said. “Opening the new museum was the focus. Our volunteers are working feverishly to get the place ready for visitors and the budget is still tight.”
The new, 6,500-square-foot Sequim Museum & Arts building at 544 N. Sequim Ave. has a number of new features in addition to some of the artifacts on display at the building on West Cedar Street. Sequim Gazette photo by Michael Dashiell
