SEQUIM — DJ Bassett, president of the Clallam County Historical Society, has been hired as interim director of the Museum & Arts Center of the Sequim-Dungeness Valley.
Bassett is an expert in digital photo preservation.
He teaches photographic and historic workshops in the western United States, most recently for Peninsula College.
Bassett has lived in Sequim for eight years and helps run the Happy Valley-area Blue Moon Lavender Farm with his wife, Magdalena.
He will earn $2,500 per month as interim director, Bassett said.
“The charter he’s been given here is building membership and expanding our community footprint,” Layton Carr, Museum & Arts Center board secretary, said Friday.
Carr said Bassett would be considered for the permanent position after it is advertised locally and nationally in museum publications.
MAC’s goal is to hire a permanent director by year’s end, Carr said, and how much the position will pay is still to be decided.
Katherine Vollenweider, MAC executive director, retired effective July 30, citing personal reasons, after five years in the position.
Carr said the board will re-evaluate the executive director’s job description before the job is advertised.
Bassett, who served on the MAC board in 2008, said he hopes the Clallam County Historical Society and MAC will continue to collaborate with classes and other events.
He also is chairman of the Clallam County Heritage Advisory Board, which advises the Clallam County commissioners on historic matters.
Through his leadership, he said, the advisory board has taken field trips to historic sites, territorial structures, cemeteries and burial grounds in an effort to learn more about those assets and to better protect them.
“Since we’ve done that, we’ve really gotten energized,” Bassett said.
He also is Sequim Cemetery Association president.
MAC has 100 volunteers, and it needs to recruit new ones, Bassett said, because many of its supporters are aging.
He also noted that MAC is focusing on video-recording oral histories from longtime local residents, which will add a dimension to the historic photos archived at the DeWitt Building, MAC’s administrative offices, 544 N. Sequim Ave.
He believes MAC is on its way to building a permanent museum fronting the administrative offices building in a large lot off North Sequim Avenue. He hopes to help MAC raise the money to do so.
Bassett also hopes to help MAC prepare for Sequim’s centennial celebration in 2013.
On the arts side of MAC, he wants to work with leadership to expand and encourage artists in the region to exhibit their works, which he sees as an economic benefit to Sequim.
Bassett is the owner of historicphotopreservation.com and bassettstudios.com.
He has worked with the Santa Barbara, Calif., Maritime Museum, Museum of Natural History and Mission Museum; the Santa Cruz, Calif., Island Foundation; and private historians and individuals in historic preservation and genealogical photography, using both traditional and digital methods to create exhibits, digitize collections and produce fine prints.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
