Maryhill Museum of Art after 100 years
By Aziza Cooper-Hovland
Columbia Gorge News
THE GORGE — As you travel east along State Route 14, a cream mansion surrounded by tall trees, green grass and an ADA accessible sculpture garden stands in stark contrast to the rocks and golden fields that dominate the landscape. This is the Maryhill Museum of Art, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.
Maryhill’s beginning is almost as unusual as its place among the predominantly agricultural towns around it. Naming the four founders starts off almost like a joke: “a lawyer, a dancer, a socialite and a queen walk into a bar.” Sam Hill was a businessman and lawyer who moved west, lobbied for and built paved roads in Oregon and Washington, including the Historic Columbia River Highway. He also began erecting a hilltop mansion above the John Day Dam, dedicated to his daughter.
His plans for a community around the house were thwarted by the lack of irrigation and its remote location. “Around 1917, as he was trying to determine the future of this place, his friend Loïe Fuller said, ‘Between us, we could furnish a museum of French fine arts,’ and they made a manifesto,” explained Maryhill’s Executive Director Amy Behrens.
Loïe Fuller was a pioneer of modern dance who lived in Paris and connected Hill with artists there, the most notable of which was Auguste Rodin, who furnished the large collection of his works housed at the museum. The Rodin room at Maryhill includes bronzes, terra cottas, plaster studies and watercolor sketches that show his full creative process, unlike many Rodin exhibits that focus on the finished bronzes alone.
The museum’s dedication took place in 1926 by Queen Marie of Romania, granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England. She trekked across the United States by train with many of the Romanian pieces now featured, both her own and others, and had a large influence on Maryhill’s design. She championed traditional folk art and the arts and crafts movement there, acknowledged in the centennial celebration via traditional Romanian embroidery and folk pottery. This exhibit also features a companion gallery for younger children to engage with the displays in a more tactile way.
Upon Hill’s death, not long after the dedication, his estate was tied up in long proceedings that delayed public opening. Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, a San Franciscan socialite and friend of Hill’s, joined the museum’s board of trustees and brought her own collection, along with her expertise in opening a museum, as she’d already done down south.
“People often say, ‘Oh, it’s such an eclectic collection,’ but it’s really influenced by the tastes of our four founders,” said Behrens. “I think the way that the museum, over the past 100 years, has stewarded that collection and expanded the collection to still align with those tastes, but really to diversify to the needs and interests of our surrounding populations is a real strength of the museum.”
And Maryhill highlights that diversity, with many additional permanent collections and seasonal exhibitions, such as the Pacific Northwest Plein Air artworks currently on display through the end of May.
Walking inside, you’ll find the Indigenous Peoples of North America exhibit right under the rotunda, filled with artwork from the tribes across the Pacific Northwest and complemented by a contemporary Indigenous art display upstairs. As Behrens explained, Maryhill works to make the Indigenous art visible, and they facilitate a Wa’paas basket weaving workshop, which has been “successful in welcoming our Indigenous people into the museum,” said Behrens. “[We’re ensuring that] we’re culture keepers and we allow culture bearers to continue teaching us.”
Another permanent display, Théâtre de la Mode, is a collection of miniature haute couture items which toured Europe and America in 1946 in the aftermath of World War II. “[People] think about it as just fashion, but it’s actually a story of resilience,” said Behrens. “[At the end of World War II, the French] were really struggling to jump start their economy again and they had all this intellectual capital, but they didn’t even have enough material to have a fashion collection mounted.”
They drew inspiration from a centuries-old European tradition of creating miniatures on mannequins, she said, that would be sent palace to palace to inspire the nobility for war relief fundraising. After the tour ended, however, they remained in the United States and were lost in the basement of a department store until de Bretteville Spreckels added them to the museum’s collection.
This collection is not static either. The curators continue to develop, modernize and make the collection more accessible for the community. “I see our future in the next 100 years as continuing to have a reciprocal relationship with the communities that we serve and continuing to have this sense of awe,” said Behrens. “Awe and wonder that completely take you out of your day-to-day life.”
Maryhill, like almost all museums following the COVID-19 pandemic, has struggled to recapture its visitors. But to ensure it stays accessible to the community, the museum’s endowment funds the educational programs, subsidizes admissions and supports daily running. They also facilitate several special admissions programs, the largest of which is the Discover and Go library program which provides admission with a local library card. For those interested in donating to the museum, or those interested in becoming a volunteer, visit maryhillmuseum.org.
The Maryhill Museum of Art is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily through mid-November.
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