By Steven Stilt
The Centralia Area Historical Museum serves as a three-story tribute to the community’s past, but museum officials are also looking to the future and working on ways to improve visitors’ experiences.
Mike Middleton, the museum’s executive director, says a key area of focus is on organizing all related memorabilia, such as school- and sports-related items, to make the displays more cohesive and to maximize the available space.
“We’d love to put that in one spot. We have some religious things. Our rail, I would love to put all the railroad stuff together, but we just don’t have room. So that’s what we’re trying to do, is to not really modernize but basically just to update and try and find room, in a building that we have no room, to better display what we have.”
One idea being looked at involves putting a modern twist on some decades-old class photos from Centralia High School, according to Middleton.
“Right now, they’re just on the walls, and they take so much space. What we would like to do is be able to take those off the walls and then digitize them. We’re trying to talk with a couple local photographers to see what that entails – I’m not even talking costs yet, but just how that would work – because our goal would be, you know, you have a flat-screen monitor where someone could come in and say, ‘my grandfather was 1957,’ and then they could call up some of those pictures and find him, rather than trying to find the picture hanging on the wall. Then that would allow us to display other items, if those aren’t hanging on the wall.”
Middleton says that in the near future, organizers are also looking to repair or replace certain facets of the museum, such as the fencing near the outside ramp, the awning that hangs over the deck, and the carpeting on the building’s second floor.
While the organization does at times pursue grant assistance, Middleton says the Centralia Area Historical Museum primarily relies on memberships, donations and gifts for its funding.
The museum was the site of Thursday night’s Greater Centralia Chamber of Commerce “Christmas After Hours” event, with museum board president Jessiycka Nix Coleman addressing the audience and Middleton leading a tour of the third floor of the building.
