The Alutiiq Museum has been closed for over a year now for a major construction project. It’s going to remain closed until next year.
Several of the building’s walls are down to their metal framing as people in high visibility vests and hard hats walk between heavy machinery. There’s still plenty of work to do before the building is ready to reopen.
The museum is about halfway through a $13.8 million construction project to expand the building.
“We’re not just doing cosmetic upgrades,” said the museum’s executive director, April Counceller. “We’re trying to make the facility usable for the next 20 or 30 years before anyone has to do this kind of thing again.”
Much of the ground floor’s walls and flooring were torn out, and the new ones are starting to come together. After renovations are complete, the building will have a bigger exhibit gallery and store, a new classroom, and significantly more storage for archives.
The old laboratory used to fill multiple roles, but now that room gets its own dedicated space too.
“The old one served as a laboratory, an office, a gathering space, an event space, a workshop area, a lunch room and everything,” Counceller said. “And now we’re going to have two separate spaces for that.”
Director of Advancement Djuna Davidson said she’s excited to have the space to host more community events.
“We didn’t have space, really, to do workshops on our own site,” she said. “So now it’s just going to make it a lot more accessible for us to provide opportunities and do it right here in house.”
Davidson said she hopes the construction will help them better connect with people on the island as well as people with Alutiiq heritage everywhere.
“There’s Alutiiq people from all over the United States who are connected to us through our store, both through the Alutiiq seal, and who sell in our store,” she said. “And I think it’s so awesome that we’re going to have a larger space to support those artists.”
One of the areas that’s mostly completed though is the archive room. Renovating that room was a bit different from regular spaces though. Construction workers had to ensure their work wouldn’t damage any of the artifacts inside.
The foreman of the project, Nathan Knapp, has been a union carpenter for 20 years.
“This is the first (time) I’ve ran into this on a project, where we actually have a museum and artifacts that are in place that we had to preserve in the old vault and make sure that everything – humidity, temperature – and all that was correct,” he said.
The crew also had to ensure the new vault matched those conditions before pieces could be moved. He said it was a unique challenge to work around.
“Typically we get to go into a building and demo everything and then build back new so this one’s a little different in that aspect,” the foreman said.
Amanda Lancaster is the Alutiiq Museum’s curator of collections. She’s been in and out of the construction areas in part to make sure all of their objects have been safe and preserved throughout the process.
“One of my absolute favorite things about this new space is that we have storage units with doors, which is so great especially for organic objects,” Lancaster said. “It creates a micro climate and just keeps them protected even better.
The renovations also added improved fire response and preparation for natural disasters like earthquakes. Lancaster said she’s also loved getting to know the collections better.
“We have over 250,000 objects,” she said. “So as much as we know the collection, anytime we work with it, we find things or remember things.”
The new storage space is expected to have enough room for another decade or so before it’s full.
Executive Director Counceller said she’s excited to see how the construction will help the museum continue to grow.
“I’ve worked here for the better part of 20 years now, and now seeing the way it’s expanding and changing is definitely kind of nostalgic sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes a little sad, but also very exciting because it’s all improvements.”
For now, the museum is still closed but construction is on track to re-open in May 2025.
