Mission: From the unique Columbia River Gorge, Maryhill Museum of Art collects, presents and preserves art and historical and natural resources to enrich and educate residents and visitors of the Pacific Northwest. Values: Accountability · Diversity · Enjoyment · Innovation · Integrity · Welcoming · Quality · Stewardship · Sustainability The Year 2011 at Maryhill Museum of Art ANNUAL REPORT Maryhill Museum of Art, located in Goldendale, Washington is a thriving organization serving Columbia River Gorge residents as well as visitors from Washington, Oregon, and beyond. The museum offers an appealing mix of temporary exhibits, often featuring Northwest artists and contemporary work, with priceless works of American, European, and Native American art from its permanent collection. It provides a diverse range of educational programs directed at thousands of students, families, young adults, and adult learners. It is financially healthy with diversified revenue sources, a growing endowment, and an engaged staff and board. In 2011 it welcomed over 36,000 guests through its doors. It presented several seasonal exhibits and its permanent exhibits featuring the museum’s collections. The museum offered dozens of programs throughout the year. The year was momentous in that construction on the Mary and Bruce Stevenson Wing began. This $10 million dollar addition brings an additional 25,000 square feet to the museum. Key features include a dedicated art education center for a wide range of public programming; a centralized collections suite to house the museum’s world-class collections; an outdoor plaza where visitors can better enjoy Maryhill’s extraordinary setting and outdoor sculpture; and a new café with terrace seating and stunning views of the Columbia River Gorge. The new wing is smart, sustainable, and honors the historic museum building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. It will strive for a United States Green Building Council Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold. See www.maryhillmuseum.org for more information. The wing will be dedicated on May 13, 2012, the anniversary of Sam Hill’s birthday. The McCarty Pond Wetland Enhancement Project was completed. The pond was created in the 1920s by Sam Hill, who built a low dam and weir to hold back waters from regional springs. The project was part of Hill’s Quaker Farming Community and supplied water to his Columbus Land Company. Later the water system served the museum, its grounds and gardens. For many years, the springs feeding the reservoir at McCarty remained the principal source of irrigation water for the museum’s grounds. As the museum’s water systems were upgraded, the pond and its dam and weir were no longer a necessity. But the historic dam, weir and pond were kept intact with the hope of one day creating an enhanced wetland and maintaining the habitat for numerous species, including the red-wing blackbird, dark-eye junco, hawks, deer, coyote, and other small animals. When, in 2009, Klickitat County and Cannon Power Group asked about areas on the museum’s 5,300 acres that might be suitable for a wetland enhancement project, McCarty Pond was the obvious choice. With the help of Shannon & Wilson, geotech and environmental 1 consultants from Seattle, Cannon and the museum developed a plan for dredging the pond to remove accumulated silt, creating a buffer zone, strengthening the historic dam and weir to prevent water seepage, and planting native plants. Work got underway in 2011 and planting will carry into the spring of 2012. Maryhill’s fiscal year begins in January and ends in December each year. In 2011 it had an operating budget of $1.3 and ended the year in the black. The museum has several investment accounts: two endowments; another unrestricted but used as endowment; and one temporarily restricted for the new wing. Only the endowments have permanently restricted funds identified as the principal. Gains (losses) are unrestricted on these accounts. Per the museum’s investment policy, the museum releases 5% of the value of the endowments based on a three-year average of the value of the endowments as of December 31 of each year. An audit is completed each year, and presented to the annual membership at its business meeting in May. DEPARTMENT REPORTS EXHIBITIONS Steve Grafe, Curator of Art Maryhill Museum’s initial changing exhibit of 2011 was Process and Presence: Selections from the Museum of Contemporary Craft. The exhibition included 40 twentieth-century craft objects from the collection of Portland’s Museum of Contemporary Craft. It was produced in-house and was on view from March 15–July 4. Tim Young of Goldendale worked with museum staff to create new exhibit furniture for some of the displays. The exhibit was accompanied by a free two-page gallery guide that was written by Steve Grafe. The second changing exhibit of 2011 was Beside the Big River: Images and Art of the Mid-Columbia Indians, which was on view from July 16–November 15. The exhibition features photographs of American Indians of the western Columbia River Plateau and select examples of regional Indian art. Some of the photographs and most of the objects on display are from Maryhill’s collection. Three objects were borrowed from a single private collector in the Willamette Valley. Tim Young again created new furniture for the exhibit and Andy Granitto of the Yakima Valley Museum was contracted to create mounts for several of the objects. This exhibit was also accompanied by a free two-page gallery guide that was written by Steve Grafe. Beside the Big River is being held over to begin the 2012 season and will be on view in the Upper Level changing exhibits gallery from March 15–May 28. Three artists were featured in Maryhill’s outdoor sculpture garden during 2011—Daniel Duford of Portland; John Mayo of White Salmon, WA; and Joseph Warren of Portland. Their sculpture was on view from May 14–October 2. It was supplemented by a new, permanent addition to the sculpture garden, Devin Laurence Field’s Folded Fan, a 7½-foot-tall steel sculpture that was donated to the museum by Melanie Tang in late 2010. In October 2011, Joseph Warren donated his loaned work, Diana’s Stag, and it will remain a permanent part of the sculpture garden. Throughout the 2011 season, a small exhibit titled The Magic Grows was featured on the Upper Level at the entrance to the Théâtre de la Mode. The display was designed to provide information about the building expansion. It included an architectural model of the Mary and Bruce Stevenson Wing and four architect’s drawings of relevant interior and exterior spaces. The display also provided informational flyers about the project, of which 600+ were taken by visitors during the course of the year. 2 In January 2011, the Boise Art Museum inquired about the availability of Maryhill’s 2010 Comics at the Crossroads: Art of the Graphic Novel exhibit. By that time, museum staff had already begun returning art to the lending artists. In late July and early August, Steve Grafe picked up the already-returned art in Seattle and Portland. He delivered the work to the Boise Art Museum on August 10. The exhibit was on display there from August 20–November 27, and the art was returned to Maryhill on December 1. Steve had delivered all of the art to the artists by December 20, except for work that must be shipped to Vancouver, BC, and Massachusetts. In June 2011, Steve completed the Collection Plan that he began in 2010. It was subsequently approved by the Collections Committee and received and filed by the Board of Trustees. Steve was invited to participate in several public forums that increased the museum’s visibility. He answered a series of questions that were reproduced as an interview in the “Western Museum” column in the July 2011 issue of Western Art Collector. In October, Steve forwarded a list and photos of some of his favorite museum objects to the WA-List website (“Lists about anything and everything in Washington State”; www.wa-list.com). The images were the sixth most viewed of WA-List’s 2011 offerings and they will be reposted when the museum reopens in March. In November, Steve’s article about the Mid- Columbia River Indians and the Beside the Big River exhibit appeared in High Desert Journal 14. Since October, Steve has also been posting a series of collection images and related historical photos to the museum’s Facebook page (they are archived in the “Maryhill Favorites” folder). These same images also appear on Maryhill’s website as the “Virtual Gallery” on the “Exhibits” page. Steve did some public speaking during 2011. On July 19, he gave a lecture titled “Orthodox Icons: Shared Traditions, Individual Expressions” to participants in Maryhill Museum’s 2011 Summer Art Institute. On July 21—in conjunction with the Summer Art Institute and the opening of the Beside the Big River exhibit—he presented a talk called “Ardent Amateurs: The Photographs of Lee Moorhouse and J.W. Thompson.” On November 13, he spoke about some of his favorite collection objects as part of the museum’s closing celebration. On September 16, Steve gave a talk titled “Finery for the Forearm: Beaded Gauntlets of the Plains and Plateau” at the Material Culture of the Prairie, Plains and Plateau Fall 2011 Conference in Idaho Falls, ID. He then went to Denver, CO, and participated in tours of local art museums and galleries with members of Maryhill Museum of Art and the Portland Art Museum’s Native American Arts Council. The highlights of the trip included curator-led tours of the Denver Art Museum’s newly-installed American Indian art galleries and the Southwest Indian and Hispanic art galleries at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.