SEQUIM — A cotton quilt with an 1860s pattern, a Globe bicycle, a handwoven cedar-bark basket and red-jasper earrings are a few of the gifts brought together to raise money for the Museum & Arts Center during MAC Nite this Saturday.
And then there are the trips for two to the Gatsby mansion in Victoria and a seven-day Holland America Line cruise to Alaska.
The annual MAC Nite dinner-auction is the foremost fundraiser for the nonprofit museum, which offers free art and history exhibitions year-round.
MAC Nite starts at 5 p.m. Saturday at the SunLand Golf & Country Club, 109 Hilltop Drive, and includes a catered dinner, a cash bar, silent and live auctions and live music by Sarah Shea and Al Harris.
35th anniversary
And since this is the MAC’s 35th anniversary, a digital slide show honoring the volunteers and members who have contributed to its development over the past three and a half decades also will be part of the party.
Tickets are $65 per person and may be purchased at the MAC Exhibit Center, 175 W. Cedar St., Sequim, or by phoning 360-683-8110.
The evening’s auctions will give patrons chances to bid on cruise and hotel packages and private dinners and tours, along with goods donated by local artists and merchants including jewelry maker Coffee Miklos of Dungeness, Mike’s Bikes of Sequim, the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe and weaver Kathey Ervin of Carlsborg.
Among the live-auction highlights: a private tour for eight of the Jamestown tribe’s House of Myths carving shed with lead totem-pole carver Dale Faulstich and a two-night stay at the Hotel Grand Pacific in Victoria.
MAC Nite proceeds are key to the Museum & Arts Center’s financial health over the coming year, said spokeswoman Renee Mizar.
The museum’s mission, she added, is to serve as the steward of Sequim’s cultural heritage.
Under Executive Director DJ Bassett, the museum is largely staffed by volunteers and receives no city or county funding, Mizar noted.
To learn more about the MAC, which also manages the Old Dungeness Schoolhouse and an archive of Sequim and Dungeness Valley photographs and artifacts, visit www.MacSequim.org.
