MAC goes hunting for treasure with latest exhibit

You’ve no doubt heard the axiom about one man’s trash being another man’s treasure. It might be a cliché, but it’s also undeniably true: Anything, no matter how unassuming it may appear, can be invaluable to someone else.

“Treasure!” is an upcoming exhibition at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, and it serves as a showcase for all kinds of unexpected but worthwhile finds, from vintage baseball cards to old board games, first edition books to gold doubloons.

“We want people to consider the whole idea of what ‘treasure’ is, and how we define it and what it means to them,” said Seth Leary, who devised the exhibit with his Seattle-based company NRG Exhibits. “There’s a really broad spectrum.”

And just as the definition of the word can apply to pretty much anything, treasure itself can be found pretty much anywhere – at the bottom of the ocean in the hull of a wrecked ship, in a neglected corner of a dusty curiosity shop, shrouded in cobwebs in your grandmother’s attic or at the coordinates of an “X” on a tattered pirate’s map.

But the “Treasure!” exhibit isn’t just about the treasure itself: It also focuses on a number of aspects involving exploration, discovery and preservation. There will be information about GPS navigation and geocaching, the histories of bank and train robberies and the California gold rush, displays of Egyptian artifacts and hands-on presentations about how various security systems work. There will also be artifacts from several shipwrecks, including an 80-pound bar of silver and a gold disc that weighs in at 7 pounds.

The exhibit is also heavily interactive. You can actually pan for fool’s gold like a 19th century prospector, search for buried treasure with metal detectors and dig through a simulated seabed in a water tank using remote controlled rovers. There’s a locked safe with a combination you can try and crack, and a video game that allows you to aim cannons and shoot virtual cannonballs at passing enemy ships.

Though the exhibit has toured around the country, this is the first time it has been presented in the Pacific Northwest, some of the pieces on display at the MAC will have a local spin.

John Moredo-Burich, the MAC’s director of museum experience, says that calls have been put out for Spokane residents to provide some of their own personal treasures for the exhibit. This will include items from several local collections, as well as pieces that were appraised during last summer’s Spokane tapings of the PBS series “Antiques Roadshow.” Local jewelry companies will be also be donating elaborate costume pieces from the early 20th century, he said.

“(The exhibit) covers every definition of ‘treasure,’ ” Moredo-Burich explained. “By broadening the definition and having the community bring in their own treasures, it really becomes a celebration of the community.”

Various pieces were still arriving at the museum in the days leading up to the exhibit’s opening, and Moredo-Burich said the contents of the “Treasure!” exhibit will likely change as more locally procured items roll in.

“It will probably be organic and evolve over the weeks,” he said.

“When you attach the word ‘treasure’ to something, it’s exciting,” Leary said. “It’s not necessarily treasure just because it has extrinsic value. … The essence of it is the hunt – you’re looking for something, and that’s the exciting part. The thing you find at the end is kind of immaterial.”

This story has been updated to correct the spelling of John Moredo-Burich’s last name.