Alutiiq Museum Looks for Members of the Public to Give Regular Feedback

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

The Alutiiq Museum is reaching out to members of the community to join an expanded circle of volunteers who will provide feedback on projects and share ideas for the future of the museum and its mission of preserving Alutiiq heritage. Collections and exhibits specialist Natalie Wadle says the group will be called the Public Programs Advisory Committee.        

“We were looking at updating our exhibits committee. That was an existing committee. Because they don’t always necessarily only look at exhibit stuff, so, this broadens the terms since they’ll look at anything from upcoming exhibits to potentially like the cover of a book or a publication that they’re working on or video screenings that aren’t necessarily for an exhibit, but that we put on.”

The change doesn’t mean that all the committee members will be new to the museum.  

“Any of the existing members have been asked to rejoin this current committee and if they don’t want to then their seat’s open, and we also open the committee up to more people. Because we used to have, I think the Committee for the Exhibits was a 6 person committee, and so we doubled it in size to a twelve-person committee.”

Wadle explains the committee’s potential impact on the museum and its content

“I think this year we’re changing out three or four exhibits, and so it’s nice to know ahead of time if what we’re putting out on display is what the public actually wants to see, and so it’d be good to idea ideas. And then for upcoming stuff, if it’s like we know we have a blank in, say, our exhibit schedule, it’s like if you have an idea of what you would like to see that we don’t know that people might think is interesting.”

You can reach out to the Alutiiq Museum staff to get involved. The deadline for expressing interest is next Wednesday, January 20.