Two months after the Jefferson County Museum of Art and History reopened and drew nearly 300 attendees to its “Free First Saturday” event in early April, it drew nearly 100 attendees to its June 4 open house to celebrate the completion of its ADA-compliant building upgrades.

Attendees such as Port Townsend City Manager John Mauro and Community Services Director Melody Sky Weaver were greeted by Tara McCauley, executive director of the Jefferson County Historical Society, and Ellie DiPietro, director of research and collections for the Museum of Art and History.

Among the museum’s refurbished areas on display for the open house were the lobby, the “Room 5” small theater gallery, the Ferguson Gallery and courtroom, and the fire hall on the main floor, while the basement was open to display the old marshal’s and medical examiner’s office, the Wilson gallery and women’s ward, and the men’s jail.

The spaces boasted ADA-compliant ramps, heightened doorways and renovated gallery walls, to provide “a more welcoming and inclusive space” for all visitors, since the historical building which houses the museum not only suffered from a lack of ramps, but also from unwieldy stairways, low doorways and low lighting, and bad handrails.

“We received many compliments on the renovations, including how meaningful it is to have all of our spaces accessible now, how much brighter and more open the spaces feel, and how seamless the upgrades appear,” McCauley said. “I am so thrilled that all of our visitors can now access all of our spaces. It’s the accessibility aspect I am most excited about.”

DiPietro pointed out that the elevator finally goes all the way down to the basement.

From this point forward, McCauley explained that the museum is moving on to install “all-new exhibit infrastructure and content,” since the renovations so far have been “a huge milestone in our project, but not the finish line.”

McCauley explained the Historical Society is still fundraising and working on designs for the new exhibits, but “we hope to start building and installing them at the end of this year, and to open the newly imagined museum next spring.”

The Ferguson Gallery is currently displaying Jamestown S’Klallam artist Timothy O’Connell III’s yíy̕ yaʔ cn ʔiʔ ʔuʔkʷɬníɬ cn nəsʔáʔɬaʔ (I Was Far Away But Now I’m Here), a body of work exploring Indigenous identity, movement and homecoming.

In the Wilson Gallery, artist Meg Kaczyk is sharing what McCauley deemed “an intimate and deeply moving portrayal of caregiving” through her exhibition, “Notes from Next to the Bed: A Caregiving Love Story in Words and Pictures.”