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The plea from Bellevue Arts Museum for financial help from the community struck me as terribly sad as well as strange. Having volunteered there for over 50 years, I can certainly attest to the ups and downs.
The recent goal of $300,000 seems a ridiculous ask to actually “save” a museum. What it needs is millions; some for operating certainly, but most for a good-size endowment so it doesn’t have to embarrass itself once more by closing or asking for help from the community.
Now, in a most difficult time for the entire world, why should we prioritize saving a little museum in the middle of a shopping center? There must be someone in the neighborhood who will finally stand up and realize that Bellevue without a museum is just a shopping mall. Sadly, the arts aren’t made a priority in the U.S. as they are in other countries. Perhaps it is a misunderstanding of what art can do for a community, a person, a country.
The misperception of what BAM does has always puzzled me. We are not just a gallery for pretty art that hangs on the wall or sits in the center of the floor. Not only have we had exhibits about every subject imaginable and by artists of all diverse backgrounds, but the museum has supported local artists before they were well-known; hosted outstanding international artists; provided learning opportunities for the community via lectures and workshops; and for years provided the only program where teens can become museum docents, thus learning presentation styles, how to talk with the public and how to use art as a tool to talk about diverse subjects.
We are a community center where people gather to learn. In just the past few years, they have been presented with conversations on Cambodia; Vietnam; Palestine; Israel; U.S. regions from north to south, east to west; homelessness; prisoners’ “last supper” plates; displaced peoples from India and Pakistan, all in different mediums; and even today, an incredible Japanese paper exhibit. We have taken our visitors around the world, around the country, around our beautiful region with great conversations using the art and artists as tools to begin the talk.
Yes, BAM has made lots of mistakes and hasn’t engaged well enough with the community. But BAM needs the funding to hire the right staff to do this — strong leaders and development people. It needs an outstanding curator/director, which we have had before, to bring us exciting exhibitions. It needs the funding to bring outstanding exhibitions that will bring in people from all regions.
This is not a critique of the mistakes made, but a hope that someone, several someones, will step up to see the value of having such an extraordinary museum on the Eastside, one that fills the void around the arts being presented elsewhere and one that provides the value of learning to the community.
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