FEBRUARY 16, 2017 // 7
Visual arts, literature,
theater, music & more
BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME
Ilwaco museum shines under director’s artful guidance
By LYNETTE RAE McADAMS
ot just anyone can look
at a lacy antique wed-
ding dress and a worn
out pair of fisherman’s
waders and see the
same beautiful story
in both of them, but
Betsy Millard can — as
executive director of
the small-but-spectacular Columbia Pacific
Heritage Museum in Ilwaco, Washington,
connecting objects to their shared story is one
of her specialties.
“Sometimes it’s the things you don’t think
of that really carry the story of a place,” she
says. “The day-to-day objects that moved with
someone through the course of regular life—
sometimes those can have the most power to
draw us into history.”
Now entering her ninth year at the mu-
seum’s helm, Millard’s current work rightly
prides itself on being stuck in the past, but that
hasn’t always been the case.
Born in Kansas to a mother who was a
painter and a father who worked as a potter,
she followed the destiny written in her blood-
lines, earning a Master of Art History from the
University of Kansas, followed by a presti-
gious post-graduate internship at the Walker
Art Center in Minneapolis.
Doors in the art world continued to open,
eventually leading her to settle in St. Louis,
where she held several positions with the St.
Louis Art Museum before accepting director-
ship of the Forum for Contemporary Art (now
the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis). En-
joying an illustrious, decade-long tenure there,
her successes included a $12 million capital
campaign, which created a new, architecturally
designed building at the heart of the city, and
helped secure the institution’s spot as a leader
in the cutting-edge world of contemporary art.
“That was a very intense time for me, pro-
fessionally and personally,” says Millard, who
retired from the museum and, effectively, the
high-level world of art, in 2002. “In the end, I
was really ready to make a change.”
But from a booming Midwestern metrop-
olis to a tiny finger of land on the southwest
coast of Washington state?
“My mother was a fifth-generation Orego-
COLUMBIA PACIFIC HERITAGE MUSEUM
115 SE Lake St., Ilwaco, Washington / 360-642-3446
Open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday
Closed Sunday and Monday
$5 adults, $4 seniors, $2.50 youth, kids under 12 are free
Admission is free every Thursday, courtesy of the Port of Ilwaco
Annual memberships: $25 individual, $40 family
nian, whose family came by wagon and settled
outside Oregon City. She spent her childhood
summers here on the peninsula, and growing
up, I did too,” explains Millard. “I was born
and raised in the Midwest, and I love it, but
when I came to a point in my life where I
really wanted to be rooted somewhere, it felt
natural to choose this place to be rooted to.”
Happy with her relocation, but ill-suited to
permanent retirement, it wasn’t long before
Millard found herself answering a newspaper
ad for a part-time director at the local heritage
museum. “I’d discovered that it was the ‘muse-
um’ part of museum work that I really loved,”
she says, smiling. “The concept that these are
places that provide people with so much —
be it knowledge, entertainment, respite, or
simply a sense of community and place. That’s
the part I’m attracted to — bringing people
together for that shared experience. I saw the
ad and started thinking, ‘You know, this just
might work.’”
Bill Garvin, president of the museum’s
board of directors, laughs to recall Millard’s
interview: “It was such a pleasant and surpris-
ing experience — we were all just dazzled
by her — still are, really. I don’t think I can
say enough good things about Betsy; she just
brings a lot to the party. To find such profes-
sionalism and dedication — to the museum
and the community — we couldn’t be luckier.”
“Her energy and enthusiasm are conta-
gious,” Garvin continues, “and she’s a vision-
ary when it comes to creating exhibits. She’s
always trying to make sure the viewer engages
— always coming back to what they can take
away, what they can digest. And once she lays
the foundation, she’s completely hands-on,
mounting and displaying the objects just so,
adding special captions — those are the things
that are her forte.”
PHOTO BY LYNETTE RAE MCADAMS
Betsy Millard is the executive director at the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum in Ilwaco, Wash-
ington. Here, she poses before one of the showcase pieces in the museum’s current exhibit,
“Memories of Megler,” which runs through March 11.
With four permanent galleries and one
changing exhibit space, there’s plenty of op-
portunity to engage Millard’s talents while also
showing off the full measure of the museum’s
collection — all of which seeks to weave
together the many layers of culture embedded
on these shores.
“There’s a lot that’s special about us,”
Millard says, “but one thing that really stands
out — aside from our collection — is our
community. Museums all over the world ask
themselves every day, ‘How do we connect
ourselves back to the community? How do
we make ourselves relevant?’ Here, more than
anywhere I’ve ever been, there’s already a
passion for place — people already have that
desire to know what they’re a part of. All we
have to do is show them.”
“If we’re doing our job right,” she adds,
“and I hope we are, then people will feel like
they have something to share back with us.
That’s my goal with every exhibit — that our
objects and the stories we’ve coaxed from
them will serve to spark another story, and
then another. That when it’s ended, you never
feel like you’ve closed the book on something
— but only like you’ve opened a different
chapter.”
To learn more about current and upcoming
exhibits at the museum, visit
columibapacificheritagemuseum.org.