Bolinas Museum

48 Wharf Road
Bolinas CA 94924

Phone: 415-868-0330
Fax: 415-868-0607
Email: [email protected]

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Description:
The Bolinas Museum is housed in its own complex of historic buildings that date back to the late 1850s. They were built at a time when Bolinas was a bustling town centered around its wharf and the schooners that carried lumber and products to supply the developing city of San Francisco. The buildings have served many purposes since the 1800s, including a saloon, meat market, antiques store, library, restaurant, gallery, surf board shop, artist studios, apartments and more. Today, the museum includes five galleries, a gracious courtyard, a suite of offices and conservation and archival storage rooms.

The museum was founded in 1983 as the Bolinas Memorial Museum by David Van Duesen, as a venue for collecting and sharing historical photographs, documents and artifacts with the community. In 1988, an accomplished Bolinas jeweler and sculptor, Joyce Clements, had the vision that the museum could also serve the artist-rich communities of Coastal Marin. With the Board of Directors, she pioneered the project and became the fist president of what was now to be the Bolinas Museum. Clements contacted artists and Linda Samuels became the first Director of the museum.

In 1988 the museum expanded its mission statement to include featuring the art of Coastal Marin artists with that was call The Living Artist Project, (more recently changed to Coastal Marin Artists) to document and exhibit the work of artists from Marshall, Tomales, Point Reyes, Inverness, Olema, Bolinas, Stinson Beach and Muir Beach.

The museum was originally housed in a tiny space about 8' wide and 15' long, yet Samuels presented both art and history exhibitions that drew the interest of the community and visitors. Peggy Duncan ran a thrift store to help support the endeavor. In 1989 Ewan Macdonald bought a group of badly deteriorating historic buildings at the curve of the road in downtown Bolinas. Macdonald did an extensive and beautiful job of restoration on the buildings and offered spaces to local businesses. The Bolinas Museum rented the large main room , and an adjacent space for a Thrift and Gift store to help pay the rent. The move was a definitive moment for the museum organization. It meant making the commitment to become a real and professional museum. The museum offered exhibitions that ranged from fine art to environmental issues, and a tradition of popular fund raising events was established.