Wasilla museum re-opens with Iditarod tribute

WASILLA — History is open for business again.

After a six-week closure, the Dorothy G. Page Museum in downtown Wasilla re-opened this week with its annual tribute to the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. The museum closed right after Christmas to do some much-needed exhibit cleaning and inventory, said museum curator Bethany Buckingham. It was a monumental task, considering the museum has about 10,000 items, most in storage.

“We’ve been inventorying our objects so we know what we have, and we’ve been cleaning some,” Buckingham said. “Although it might not look like they’re clean, they’re better than what they were before. Some of our objects are 100 years old. We have a table that was used by O.G. Herning and it’s over 100 years old, so you have to be careful.”

Over the six weeks, museum staff inventoried about 50 percent of the items, “so it’s going to be an ongoing effort,” she said.

“A lot of people say, ‘Well, you don’t have that much stuff,’” she said. “But we have a lot of things in storage that we don’t put on display because they’re very fragile and we want to preserve that. We’ll bring those things out throughout the coming year. If we had more space we could collect more things, store more things and display more things.”

The museum’s 2,000 square feet of space is packed, but “I could use a whole city block,” Buckingham said.

The re-opening coincides with the museum’s Iditarod exhibit, which highlights Valley Arts Alliance pieces and other items relating to the world famous sled dog race. That Wasilla plays an important role in the race’s history is appropriate, Buckingham said.

The museum’s namesake, Dorothy Page, is generally referred to as “the Mother of the Iditarod,” with mushing legend Joe Redington Sr. tabbed “the Father of the Iditarod.”

In fact, one of the museum’s permanent exhibits is dedicated to the pair, which meshes well with the annual tribute to the race.

“In 1967, Dorothy Page and Joe Redington Sr. started the race,” Buckingham said. “She was involved in the beginning stages of it. The story is, her and Joe Redington were at the Willow Winter Carnival and she had this idea of running a dog sled race, because they were trying to bring back some of Alaska’s history that was being taken over by the planes, trains and automobiles.”

So, Page asked if it would be possible to do a local race. From that first 50-mile run, the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race has expanded to its current 1,000-mile race that attracts mushers, fans and media from around the globe. Today, the No. 1 spot in the race is always held open in Redington’s honor.

“We are so special to have the Iditarod here and have an experience that no one else in the world has,” Buckingham said.

Included in the VAA exhibit are pieces from locally know and recognizable artists, like Suzanne Bach, Carmen Summerfield, Rob Nelson and Nan Potts.

The items range from paintings to photographs to a three-dimensional paw print Summerfield created using drywall and papier-maché.

Potts created a striking triptych, which is a work of art using three pieces. When put together, they form a Native symbol for “wolf.”

Then there’s the whimsical painting where the mushers and dog teams have a cartoonish look.

“It’s kind of very Disney-ish, I think, and it represents Libby Riddles, the first female winner of the Iditarod,” Buckingham said.

Regular museum-goers will notices a few changes, the most dramatic being the removal of display walls from the back part of the building. That building was the original museum and was first built in 1931 as a community gathering place.

“They had church services, government elections, dances — anything you can think of happened here,” she said. “Its one of the only buildings left in Wasilla on its original site.”

By taking out the walls, the room is open for larger and more interactive exhibits, Buckingham said.

“We’re getting rid of those walls, which will take away some wall space, but it will really open it up in here,” she said. “As we get closer to the Iditarod, we’ll have a dog sled display here.”

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.