In the waning days of 2021, we put out an unusual volunteer request—an all-points bulletin for a small team to inventory the collection of artwork and nauticalia that has gathered at the Northwest Maritime Center over the years. The collection includes 45+ years of original Wooden Boat Festival artwork, world-class drawings and paintings from generous donors, historic ship models, race trophies, watercolor architectural renderings, and more.

We expected a couple of respondents who could do some data entry and take a tape measure to some framed pieces—we got SO MUCH MORE. Led by Dr. Terryl Asla, the team of seven volunteers planned, designed, and implemented a comprehensive 2-month project to catalogue, inventory, research, and photograph our collection of more than 200 objects. Allene Niehaus and Scott Buchner combed through reams of old Festival programs, researched artists online, and created a robust new database including medium, dimensions, provenance, artist info, and more. Carl Berger spent hours building the photo frame platform that was used in digitizing the art archives. Jim Romberg, Terry Tennesen, and Wayne Myer led the photography efforts and set up a professional studio here at NWMC to document each piece in high resolution. Wayne’s digital wizardry blew everyone away—he even captured 360-degree images of our largest ship model using a drone!

We are incredibly grateful to this team for their energy, time, and commitment to this project which exceeded our expectations by leaps and bounds. Watch out Art Inventory Team—we’re thinking up another project for you!