Two New Museums

The Sonoma County Museum is evolving from an art and history museum under a single roof to an umbrella organization (using a Smithsonian model), with separate facilities for art and history and a shared warehouse for collections storage. This strategic direction will allow the museum to better fulfill its mission by individually addressing the separate aesthetic and programming challenges of visual art and history.

In 2009, the museum was offered donated unfinished space in the multi-use structure planned by Hugh Futrell and Bill Carle in the former AT&T building in downtown Santa Rosa. The museum is currently exploring the cost and funding sources to building out this space to provide a unique venue for contemporary art. Designed by architect Mark Jensen of San Francisco, the new art museum will be a national model for presenting and advancing contemporary art, serving as a center for artists and all audiences, and as a forum for critical, scholarly, and public discourse.

SCM will transform its present facility, Santa Rosa’s historic 1910 post office building, into a dynamic North Coast regional history museum. Designed by James Knox Taylor, the “nation’s architect,” the post office is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is recognized as one of the few remaining examples of the Classical Federal Architecture in Sonoma County and, with the adjacent museum-owned properties, will become an outstanding history museum.

Assuring the Museum’s continued success in presenting contemporary art and history requires a commitment to financial sustainability and a vision for growth. The opening of a contemporary art museum and the expansion of SCM’s history programming will increase the budget a minimum of fifty percent. The Museum plans to share staff and administrative resources for the two facilities and anticipates additional expenses for programming and education.

The only means of assuring steady revenue and positioning the Museum for long-term success is to increase the Museum’s endowment substantially. Endowment also ensures that the Museum can continue to remain independent, take risks, and develop innovative programming. If we are to attain the level of artistic and intellectual quality that will secure Sonoma County Museum’s position in the museum world, we need to build the Museum’s endowment.

For more information or to support the museum’s expansion and endowment projects, please contact Diane Evans, Executive Director, at devans@sonomacountymuseum.org.