Governor proposes merger of Washington State History Museum and Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture

January 26, 10:19 PMSeattle History ExaminerBenjamin Lukoff

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Washington State History Museum, Tacoma. Photo by
Flickr user romulusnr under Creative Commons license

The Seattle Times is reporting that Governor Chris Gregoire's budget calls for the merger of Tacoma's Washington State History Museum and Spokane's Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture. More specifically, it proposes that the Washington State Historical Society be merged with the Eastern Washington State Historical Society (PDF). This would "saves the state $500,000 per year by eliminating redundant positions and by combining similar activities such as museum operations, exhibit preparation, and education services."

Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, Spokane.
Photo by Wikipedia user Murderbike, released to
public domain

I assume "museum operations" doesn't mean an outright closure of one of the buildings, and the Times article only speaks of "administrative, bookkeeping, information technology, and exhibit preparation staff" being combined, as well as the two 30-member boards into one 30-member board. Can anyone confirm that? And what do you think of the head of the MAC's assertion that having the combined organization being run out of Tacoma would devastate fundraising in Spokane? The Times says "private donors...now provide about half the operating funds" for MAC.

This does make me wonder why the two museums are run by the state and not by nonprofit foundations, like Seattle's MOHAI and Pacific Science Center, or aren't attached to a university, like the Burke. I'm sure the University of Washington and Washington State University aren't in the best position to be taking on extra responsibilities, but I wonder if there isn't enough philanthropic money out there to set these two history museums free?

Apparently the Washington State Historical Society was founded in 1891 as an independent entity, but came under the state's wing in 1903. (It subsequently merged with the Ferry Museum in 1933 and the State Capital Museum in 1993.) The Eastern Washington State Historical Society's history is a little more difficult to ferret out given limited time, unfortunately, but I do know it was founded in 1916 and was once called the Cheney Cowles Museum after Cheney Cowles of Mount Spokane fame. I wouldn't be surprised if it, too, was independent, if only for a while.

At any rate, neither museum appears to be happy about this proposal. If anyone has any further details, I'd love to hear about them in the comments.