The museum’s northeast gallery (or “brick room”) is currently undergoing renovation in preparation for the installation of the SP&S exhibit. Several local trade unions are volunteering time to complete the renovation.
We invite you to come by and see how the space is shaping up!
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This exhibit closed on February 2nd, 2012.
This new exhibit continues our recognition of the centennial of Washington State women gaining (and keeping) the right to vote in 1910. (Oregon women gained their right to vote in 1912.) This exhibit was made possible due to the generous support of Margaret Colf Hepola, The Vancouver Business Journal and The Columbian.
The Clark County Historical Museum will open their newest exhibit, Road to Equality: The Struggle for Women’s Rights in the Northwest on Thursday, June 24, 2010 , with a reception from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m . This new exhibit continues our recognition of the centennial of Washington State women gaining (and keeping) the right to vote in 1910. (Oregon women gained their right to vote in 1912.) Reception attendees will have the opportunity to make their own political buttons about issues of personal interest and vote on the Equal Rights Amendment while mingling with some of Vancouver’s legendary ladies as played by the Vancouver Heritage Ambassadors. This exhibit will also launch the museum’s first use of the Guide by Cell program which enables museum visitors to access additional information throughout the exhibit by using their cell phones. The program will also enable visitors to provide the museum with feedback about this newly created exhibit. Light refreshments will be served; the reception is free and open to the public.
From the victory of the 19th Amendment to the struggle to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, many women – and men as well – worked their entire adult lives to secure women’s rights. Today, in the Northwest and across the United States, women have made inroads into formerly male-dominated fields including politics and commerce, but it has been a long road and large disparities still remain. This exhibit will challenge as well as educate and entertain as you learn more about some of the Northwest’s heroines from pioneer times until today. Road to Equality will run through December 31, 2011. During the 18 month exhibition we will host a number of related public programs that will be held in conjunction with this exhibit so check in with museum staff or this website for upcoming details and scheduling information.
This exhibit was made possible due to the generous support of Margaret Colf Hepola, The Vancouver Business Journal and The Columbian.
Downloadable Paper Dolls (Pepper Kim, creator, CCHM Educational Advisory Committee Member)
Scavenger Hunt for the Road to Equality (Created by Legacy High School Teacher Pepper Kim)
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Posted in Past Exhibits
Tagged Equal Rights Amendment, exhibit, Road to Equality, Washington State
Brautigan Exhibit Trout Fishing Poster
This exhibit will feature previously unpublished photographs of noted author Richard Brautigan taken by photographer Eric Weber, posters and other memorabilia from his readings in San Francisco, a selection of the nearly 400 unpublished manuscripts donated to The Brautigan Library, and video and sound installations created by the Washington State University Vancouver Creative Media & Digital Culture faculty and students.
Please join us on Thursday October 7, 2010 from 5-9 PM for the opening of, Autumn Trout Gathering. This exhibit will feature previously unpublished photographs of noted author Richard Brautigan taken by photographer Eric Weber, posters and other memorabilia from his readings in San Francisco, a selection of the nearly 400 unpublished manuscripts donated to The Brautigan Library, and video and sound installations created by the Washington State University Vancouver Creative Media & Digital Culture faculty and students.
The exhibit is being curated by WSU V’s Dr. John Barber and Jeannette Altman and will run through January 30, 2011 (Brautigan’s birthday). At 7 PM noted Brautigan scholar and WSU V professor, Dr. John Barber will lecture on The Brautigan Library Challenge which will explain our exciting new museum program in more detail. Light refreshments will be available. Exhibit openings at the museum are free and open to the public; donations are appreciated.
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Note: this is a past event.
The Clark County Historical Museum is partnering with Clark County and WSU Extension to host the Museum’s 7th Annual Harvest Fun Day at the 78th Street Heritage Farm site in Hazel Dell. This free family-oriented event promises a full day of activities, contests, and displays to celebrate Clark County’s rural heritage. Formerly held in downtown Vancouver, the event is scheduled for Saturday, September 25, 2010, from 10 AM to 4 PM, on the grounds of the farm site.
Displays and demonstrations include antique farm equipment, rope making and corn grinding with the Fort Vancouver Antique Equipment Association, a blacksmith and his working forge, working draft horses and mules, small animals displays by the Clark County 4-H.
A number of hands-on activities will be provided including pumpkin decorating and the ever-popular scarecrow making, with all materials provided free courtesy of Bi-Zi Farms and Spanky’s Family Consignment Shop; and button making with Dorothy Krugner of The Button Jar. Legacy High School students will offer face painting. Clark County Commissioner Marc Boldt will lead wagon tours of the property. Event attendees will also be able to “give back to the community” by assisting the Clark County Food Bank with harvesting vegetables for later distribution to families in need.
Pie-eating contests will begin at 11:30, followed by corn-shucking contests at 1:30 PM. Both contests are split into three age groups and require pre-registration. Age brackets are 4-8, 9-15, and 16 and over. Register by contacting the Museum at (360) 993-5679 or by email at cchm@pacifier.com.
Vancouver Pizza will sell pizza throughout the day, donating part of the proceeds to the Museum. Live music will be provided from 10 am – 12 noon by the Washington Old Time Fiddlers Association.
This event is made possible through generous support from the Clark-Cowlitz Farm Bureau, Bi-Zi Farms, Spanky’s Family Consignment Shop, The Columbian, Dulin’s Café, Fort Vancouver Antique Equipment Association, Waste Connections, Soha Sign, Water & Air Works, Kazoodles, and Sunrise Bagels.
The museum is in need of volunteers to help staff the event. Volunteers are needed to assist children with hands on craft activities and to help set up and break down the event. To volunteer to help at this event, contact CCHM Visitor Services Coordinator Karen Washabaugh at (360) 993-5679 or by email at cchm@pacifier.com.
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Tickets are available now for our Fourth Annual Women’s Tea & Luncheon event on Monday March 15, 2010. This annual event is held in honor of National Women’s History Month. Advanced ticket purchase required; seating is limited; tickets are $35/person. This event sells out every year. Last year’s event even had a waiting list! Participants receive a catered luncheon and entertainment. This year the event will be the “closing act” for our Boomer! exhibit. Museum staff will begin dismantling the Boomer! exhibit the following day so we found it fitting to honor one of America’s great entertainers, Frank Sinatra.
Join us and tribute singer John English at this special event. John English known as “The Voice” has been thrilling audiences both young and old since the age of 19. He first developed his love for the great music of Frank Sinatra at the young age of 10. Since then, his career has taken him to numerous venues and events across the west coast from Portland, Oregon to the fabulous Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. To purchase your ticket visit or contact the museum at (360) 993-5679.
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This exhibit closed in 2010.
This exhibit featured the work of more than a dozen local female artists, ranging in media from acrylic and beadwork to sculpture and three-dimensional collage.
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This exhibit was on display at the museum during 2010.
Franklin D. Roosevelt helped create a Democratic tidal wave that swept across Washington and the nation in 1932 during the depths of the Great Depression. He promised Americans a “New Deal.” After Roosevelt took office in March, 1933, each day brought dramatic new developments and agencies, including the Works Progress Administration, or WPA.
The New Deal in Washington took many forms, some as awesome as the Grand Coulee Dam, frequently described as “the biggest thing on earth.” The common thread running through many New Deal programs was jobs for the unemployed. Unemployed artists, laborers and researchers were all put back to work in their communities leaving behind a legacy of roads, bridges, murals and parks. Maria Pascualy, curator at the Washington State Historical Society, selected 30 photographic images from representative projects across the state and paired them with an essay by historian Carlos Schwantes. The Washington State Historical Society is a repository for the WPA Washington State photographic collection, the WPA Washington State Federal Writers Project manuscript Collection and the WPA king County Emergency Relief Administration Photographic Collection. This exhibit is from the Traveling Exhibit Service of the Washington State Historical Society.
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Note: This exhibit is now closed.
Picture Clark County featured 32 selected reprints from the digital photographic collections of Clark County Historical Museum, along with several antique cameras from the curator’s private collection.
A Curator’s Talk, featuring co-curators Jeannette Altman and Robert Schimelpfenig as well as Susan Tissot, executive director of the Clark County Historical Museum, was held in the WSU Vancouver Library on January 14, 2011.
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Posted in Past Exhibits
Tagged exhibit, history, offsite, photograph collection, WSUV
Note: This exhibit is now closed.
Reflections of Change: Memories of Mount St. Helens. Commemorating the 30 th anniversary of the Mount St. Helens eruption that forever changed Clark County ‘s skyline… Sometimes life can change in a single instant. On May 18, 1980 , Mount St. Helens erupted with a level of violence that few had expected. Join us for an exhibit featuring personal accounts of those who lived, worked, and played in the shadow of the ice-cream-cone shaped mountain that will never be the same. Each of these accounts is a valuable piece of the story as a whole and together they give a more complete and personal look at the effects a natural disaster can have on the landscape.
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Posted in Past Exhibits
Tagged 1980's, exhibit, Mt. St. Helens, volcano, Washington State
Note: This exhibit is now closed.
The baby boom generation has never been shy about telling the world what’s on its mind. Clark County Historical Museum has extended the run of its Boomer! exhibit through 2009 due to baby boomer demand. “Baby boomer” is a term commonly used to describe the 76 million people born between 1946 and 1964. The Boomer! exhibit, exploring the ways the baby boom generation transformed American culture, places particular emphasis on Southwest Washington. The exhibit originally was scheduled to close at the end of April 2009. It now will run through the end of 2009.
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Note: This exhibit is now closed.
Catharine Paine Blaine: Seneca Falls and The Women’s Rights Movement in the State of Washington is a traveling exhibit that celebrates the 2010 Washington Women’s Suffrage Centennial through an exploration of the effect of settlers’ reform ideas on the development of women’s rights in Washington State. Washington was an early leader in women’s suffrage and passed a voting law 10 years before the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.
Catharine Paine Blaine and her husband, David E. Blaine, were the first Methodist missionary couple in Seattle in 1853. Blaine, one of the 100 signers of the Declaration of Sentiments at the July 1848 Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y., had strong views about women’s rights. Blaine voted in Washington long before the women of her native New York State gained that right. The exhibit includes a timeline of the movement to win women’s suffrage in the State of Washington.
The exhibit, which runs through the end of the year, is a joint project of Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, N.Y., and the Washington State Historical Society.
The exhibit opens on the same evening as July’s First Thursday Museum After Hours speaker Linda Chalker-Scott discusses most common myths and misconceptions that plague home gardeners and horticultural professionals. Chalker-Scott is a Washington State University professor and Master Gardener Program curriculum director. Chalker-Scott wrote The Informed Gardener and will sign copies of her book. The museum is open for free 5 to 9 p.m. on First Thursday evenings. Lectures begin at 7 p.m.
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Note: This exhibit is now closed.
The Mapmaker’s Eye exhibit commemorates the bicentennial of fur agent and cartographer David Thompson’s explorations in the Northwest between 1807 and 1812. It will be at Clark County Historical Museum for a limited engagement through June 6.
The Mapmaker’s Eye: David Thompson (1770-1857) on the Columbia Plateau, is a traveling exhibit based on a book by Spokane, WA historian Jack Nisbet. The exhibit opens at the Clark County Historical Museum at 5 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 29 and runs through June 6, 2009. The exhibit commemorates the bicentennial of fur agent and cartographer David Thompson’s explorations in the Northwest between 1807 and 1812. Thompson, the counterpart of America’s Lewis and Clark, was an English-Canadian fur trader who worked for the Hudson Bay Company in Manitoba, Canada, before joining its competitor, the Northwest Company. Thompson was the first European to navigate the full length of the Columbia River. The maps he made of the Columbia River basin east of the Cascade Mountains were of such high quality and detail that they were used well into the mid-20th century. He also was the first Euro-American to make the acquaintance of many Plateau tribes.
The exhibit originally was designed by the Museum of Arts & Culture in Spokane. It is made available via the Washington State Historical Society’s traveling exhibit service. It features excerpts from Thompson’s field journals and reproductions of his maps and sketches; historic paintings by Paul Kane, Henry J. Ware, and Gustavus Sohon and; photographs of period surveying instruments, fur trade items and tribal artifacts. It also includes related objects from the Clark County Historical Museum Collection.
Two books about David Thompson are available at the Museum:
The Mapmaker’s Eye: David Thompson on the Columbia Plateau
By Jack Nisbet Washington State University Press; 2005
Columbia Journals
By Jack Nisbet Washington State University Press; 2005
Bicentennial Edition By David Thompson (Edited by Barbara Belyea) University of Washington Press; 2007
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Posted in Past Exhibits
Note: This exhibit is now closed.
The Clark County Historical Museum, VANCOUVER, in cooperation with Humanities Washington, will host the local showing of Key Ingredients: America By Food, a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition which delves into the historical, regional and social traditions that merge in everyday meals and celebrations of the American table. The exhibition will be on view beginning July 26, 2008 from 3-5 PM and continuing through September 14, 2008 and will give the Clark County Historical Museum an opportunity to celebrate the region’s food heritage. The Bank of Clark County and The Columbian are the local sponsors helping to bring the exhibit to Clark County.
The Clark County Historical Museum and the surrounding community has been expressly chosen by Humanities Washington and the Smithsonian Institution to host Key Ingredients as part of the Museum on Main Street project – a national/state partnership to bring exhibitions and programs to rural cultural organizations. The exhibition will tour 10 communities in Washington State during 2008-2009.
Through a selection of artifacts, photographs and illustrations, Key Ingredients examines how culture, ethnicity, landscape and tradition influence the foods and flavors we enjoy across the nation. The exhibition looks at the evolution of the American kitchen and how food industries have responded to the technological innovations that have enabled Americans to choose an ever-wider variety of frozen, prepared and fresh foods.
An interactive website, www.keyingredients.org, has been developed in conjunction with the exhibition. The site invites people across the country to share their family recipes and food stories, learn about other food traditions and identify favorite small town eateries.
“We are very pleased to bring Key Ingredients to our area,” said Susan Tissot, Executive Director, Clark County Historical Society & Museum. “We hope that it will inspire many to become even more involved in the cultural life of our community.”
“Allowing all of our state’s residents to have access to the cultural resources of our nation’s premiere museum is a priority of Humanities Washington,” said Ellen Terry, Director of Grants and Exhibits. “With this special tour, we are pleased to be working with the Clark County Historical Museum to help develop local exhibitions and public programs to compliment the Smithsonian exhibition.” Such events include:
Key Ingredients is part of Museum on Main Street (MOMS), a unique collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES), state humanities councils across the nation, and local host institutions. To learn more about Key Ingredients and other MOMS exhibitions, visit www.museumonmainstreet.org. Support for Museum on Main Street has been provided by the United States Congress. Local support to bring Key Ingredients to Clark County is provided by the Bank of Clark County and The Columbian.
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Note: This exhibit is now closed.
A Contemporary American Indian Art Portfolio opened on June 10, 2006 at 5 PM. This exhibit featured juried art in a variety of mediums from artists of various ethnic backgrounds who have given their perspective on Lewis and Clark through their artwork. The exhibit ran through September 30, 2006 at the Clark County Historical Museum. Additional pieces from this exhibit were on display at the Sixth Street Gallery, 105 West 6th Street, Vancouver Washington, from June 10, 2006 through July 2, 2006.
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Posted in Past Exhibits
Full Circle: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrowis the third and final installation in our Native Perspectives series. This 2006 series marks the anniversary of the infamous Corps of Discovery. Full Circle features contemporary works by noted Native American artists Lillian Pitt and Chuck Williams. The exhibit also includes selections from the Museum’s Native American collection.
Posted in Past Exhibits
