Museum nets $700,000 from native artifacts

Tim Newcomb
Tribune assistant editor

A seal bowl owned by the Lynden Pioneer Museum sold at an auction that netted the museum more than $700,000 from Native American artifacts once part of the Berthusen Collection.

LYNDEN — Historical items are only worth as much as someone is willing to pay for them. And for the Lynden Pioneer Museum, that translates to an additional $703,000 in an endowment to offset its operational deficit.
  In early 2009, a collector approached the museum and offered to buy pieces of the Native American display, which came from the Berthusen Collection that was donated to the museum when it opened in 1976.
  While the museum turned down that offer — which ended up being only 60 percent of the actual worth — the unsolicited offer started an investigation into the value of Native items stored in various places throughout the museum.
  Troy Luginbill, museum director, said that the end result was discovering 54 items that were not tied to the museum’s interpretation of local history. After going through a public input period, the museum sent those pieces to auction.
  In December, the firm of Bonhams & Butterfields sold 42 of those 54 pieces for net proceeds of $703,000. The other 12 items did not meet the reserve limit and will be auctioned again this summer.
  Luginbill said that while the large influx of cash may seem like a boon the museum could never expect — and, to be sure, it was — it only helps to take the museum’s operations out of the red to even, not to black.
  The Dec. 14 auction was part of a larger Native American Art auction at the San Francisco firm, which included live, Web-based, phone-based and proxy bidding.
  Of the total amount, five items accounted for more than three-quarters of the Lynden total.
  The biggest fetch was for an eagle bowl about the size of a pumpkin. It drew around $200,000.
  Another bowl, this one sculpted like a seal, grabbed $175,000, while two other seal bowls earned $69,000 and $60,000.
  The other popular item was a Haida frontlet, a carved seated figure that was used as part of a headdress. It fetched $130,000.
  Luginbill said the museum board and museum’s endowment board went into the event hoping to make $550,000. “Anything else above that is a blessing,” Luginbill said. “We were tickled pink it went as high as it did.”
  All the money raised has been deposited in the museum’s endowment, bringing it a quarter of the way needed to fully and independently support the museum. Interest proceeds from the endowment will pull the museum’s operating budget up to a “zero loss” budget.
  “It doesn’t give us any extra money, but finally does balance the budget,” Luginbill said. “It gives us stable footing on which to grow into the future.”
  The fund’s goal is $3 million. It had roughly $28,000 before the auction.
  The $40,000 the museum raises annually is still needed, he stressed. The new money will account for roughly $10,000 per year.
  All the items were from the Berthusen Collection, but not integral to the museum’s display after a 2008 reorganization of the exhibit. Some items weren’t even displayed, and some were “bottom-shelved” with no interpretation alongside them. “They said nothing, but were just cool,” Luginbill said.
  Luginbill thinks that some of the items, which are from either British Columbia tribes or Eskimo tribes, are a compilation of items picked up during Olive Berthusen’s travels north in the early 1900s and her father’s travels east (Iceland, etc.). None of the items have local significance.
  E-mail Tim Newcomb at tim@lyndentribune.com.