SEQUIM — For DJ Bassett, 2011 was a year for learning the challenges ahead, strategic planning and reorganizing The Museum and Arts Center of the Sequim-Dungeness Valley as an institution that preserves local history and promotes the arts.
“This is going to be the year of fundraising,” the executive director said at his office in MAC’s DeWitt Administration Center, 544 N. Sequim Ave.
“I am open to hearing what the community wants.
Building the center’s membership, now at about 400, is an important component for boosting donations and other funding sources, including grants, Bassett said.
“We are looking at a goal of 600 members,” he said.
He and former MAC board president Emily Westcott have been making the fundraising rounds to area groups and organizations to get the word out about MAC and generate interest that could lead to additional donations and memberships.
MAC has about 110 regular volunteers, some of whom are helping with a full-fledged inventory of the center’s archives and historic artifact collection stored at the DeWitt Administration Center.
Sue Ellen Riesau, publisher of the Sequim Gazette who was elected as MAC’s board president at the center’s annual meeting in late January, agreed with Bassett’s approach and praised him for actively becoming the face of the Museum and Arts Center in the community.
Also elected as officers to the MAC board were John D’Urso, vice president, and Karen Westwood, treasurer.
“Fundraising, financial stability and membership all go hand in hand,” Riesau said. “We have to have supporters.”
Without a reliable infusion of funding, she said, MAC’s future is threatened.
Bassett said volunteer recruitment was another part of his outreach effort, complete with a “recruitment fair” late last year aimed at newcomers, old-timers and those in between.
He said he is building a stronger association with the city of Sequim through its communications and marketing manager, Barbara Hanna, and Diane Shostak, executive director of Olympic Peninsula Visitor Bureau, to help make the Museum and Arts Center more of a tourist attraction at the center of town.
“We want to support the economy of the entire community,” he said. “We also need to support the entire community to keep the doors open.”
Not long after he completed his first year as MAC’s executive director, Bassett last month presented his first annual report to the newly elected board for the center that includes the local history museum on West Cedar Street that doubles as an art gallery; the Second Chance consignment shop next-door, proceeds from which go to MAC; and the historic Dungeness Schoolhouse, the Sequim prairie icon since 1892.
The schoolhouse stands out brighter than before after some foundation and windowpane work and a coat of new, more historically accurate paint colors (dubbed cream and “Dungeness Red”) were added last summer, costing more than $30,000.
The colors make the schoolhouse look more like it did in 1921.
It was the first major historic preservation project on the MAC’s and Bassett’s list after he was officially hired in January last year after service as interim director since 2010 and going through a hiring process that picked him from 20 applicants vying to succeed former MAC Executive Director Katherine Vollenweider, who retired from the position in July 2010.
Bassett said the schoolhouse needs a commercial kitchen to use it for weddings and other special events, which would raise revenues for the MAC.
The schoolhouse’s stairwell is now equipped with a one-seat lift for those unable to climb the steps but Bassett said an elevator at the rear entrance would be more effective.
“We probably need an elevator in the back like the Carnegie building in Port Angeles,” said Bassett, the former president of the Clallam County Historical Society, which operates the former Carnegie Library building on Lincoln Street as a museum.
Besides the upgraded interior, Bassett said the schoolhouse has an upgraded fire alarm system.
The annual MAC Night fundraiser will be continued each April to generate donations, he said.
Another project to contemplate is the Manis mastodon exhibit at the Museum and Arts Center on West Cedar Street, Bassett said.
That exhibit showcases one of ancient history’s greatest discoveries.
Emanuel “Manny” Manis unearthed mastodon tusks in August 1977 that led to Washington State University zoologist and archaeological dig team leader Carl Gustafson’s discovery of a bone spearhead point stuck in a mastodon’s rib.
Last year, the journal Science released an article written by a team of national archaeology scientists confirming Gustafson’s theory that people inhabited the area around Sequim some 800 years before the Clovis people, once believed to be the first Paleo-Indian people to inhabit North America between 13,800 and 14,000 years ago.
It was a paradigm-shifting archaeological discovery in Happy Valley, south of Sequim, that now has made history twice.
“We are planning to improve the exhibit,” Bassett said. “It could be an enhancement of
what he have.”
That exhibit was conceived with the help of Manis’ widow, Clare, who still lives at her home on the former dig site.
Bassett said state officials may want to do more with the exhibit through the state heritage caucus, of which Rep. Kevin Van De Wege, D-Sequim, co-chairs.
Expanding the MAC’s facility on 2 acres that fronts the DeWitt Building east of North Sequim Avenue has been put on hold.
“The board put a moratorium on the building plans in October because of the economic climate,” Bassett said.
Asked how long he plans to stay at The Museum and Arts Center, Bassett, always the low-key joker says, “ I’m about to offer my body to collections,” pointing to the artifacts room across the hall from his office.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
