A Chance To Be A Big League City

Spokane may never have an NFL football franchise, but it can be in the big leagues in another category.

On the second floor of the Cheney Cowles Museum sits a small plexiglass case with the big-league future of the Inland Northwest’s cultural infrastructure inside.

The case contains a scale model of a new museum.

The model museum is designed to display the Eastern Washington State Historical Society’s remarkable collection of American Indian art.

Together, the new museum and the more than 28,000 examples of American Indian art represent Spokane’s cultural equivalent of the Seattle Seahawks.

This month, the monumental task begins of convincing Spokane, the Pacific Northwest and the nation that a first-class Native American museum should be built in Spokane.

A nationally-known fund-raising organization already has been hired.

Nancy Herstand, vice chairman of C.W. Shaver & Co. of New York arrives in Spokane Jan. 16 to begin figuring out how to transform the Cheney Cowles Museum into a nationally-recognized center for Plateau Indian art.

“I know that a great cultural center in a region makes it a better place to live and attracts people,” she said from her Madison Avenue office.

“And I sense the project being discussed in Spokane is very timely because all around the country we are witnessing a much greater awareness and appreciation of Native American art and culture today.”

To make the Spokane project happen, Herstand knows, support will have to come not just from Spokane, but from the state of Washington and benefactors from around the nation.

This legislative session, the Eastern Washington State Historical Society will ask for a $2 million state appropriation to fund design plans for the expanded museum.

Certainly it can be argued that Spokane’s turn has come for such support. In the last four years, the Legislature has dedicated up to $40 million for a new museum for state archives and exhibits in Tacoma.

The Eastern Washington State Historical Society can make an even more compelling case for the value of expanding the Cheney Cowles Museum based on the experiences of other cities that have built major American Indian museums.

In Indianapolis, for example, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian and Western Art, which opened six years ago, now is considered by many hotels and convention recruiters a bigger draw than the Indianapolis Colts.

And, last summer provided a telling example of how well the region will support first-rate museum exhibits. The special showing of Dutch and Flemish masterpieces and the related historical exhibit of early Dutch investments in pioneer Spokane attracted 30,000 visitors to the Cheney Cowles museum over 10 weeks.

Cheney Cowles Museum Director Glenn Mason says an expanded museum built around its Native American collection could triple the annual visits to the museum.

All that stands between the plexiglass model and reality is up to $50 million in construction and operating costs and the challenge of getting people as excited about a Top 10 museum as about a Seahawk victory.

In an important way, however, the toughest part already is completed. The museum has material to be nationally known.

“We already know we have the caliber of American Indian artifacts to make this happen,” said Lee Walker, president of the Eastern Washington State Historical Society board of trustees. “Everyone who looks at our collection of Plateau Indian materials says it is among the top 10 collections in the country.”

The museum’s collection of beadwork, baskets and other artifacts of the Plateau Indians is wide and deep thanks to early contributions from Spokane pioneer families and Native Americans.

The collections were strengthened considerably in 1991 when the Museum of Native American Cultures in Spokane closed and merged its collections with the works at the Cheney Cowles Museum.

Within the current museum, less than 5 percent of the collection can be displayed at any time.

As museum director Mason explains,”The new museum is not just a bigger place to show off our collections. We want it to be a place that belongs to the entire community and is part of who they are.”

The expansion includes much more emphasis on educational and interpretative programs and events. The grandchildren of miners and farmers could come to learn their ancestors’ history.

Descendants of local tribes could look through skylights at the sun and moon as they contemplated the artifacts.

In time, the new museum could become a centerpiece to a new generation, a bricks-and-mortar reminder that we are a place that is confident in both its past and future.

The figure is large.

The path to the new museum will be difficult to negotiate.

But this is a chance for Spokane to be in the big leagues.