Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - ‘Wayfinding: Stories of Maps & Place’ opens at the Cortes Island Museum, between 1 and 4 PM on Sunday, March 26.
“I think wayfinding really touches on so many aspects of our current life. We have a really fabulous series of maps and artifacts. It's an opportunity to share that with the public for the first time on many counts. I think everybody, on some level, has a personal story to do with wayfinding. This is a celebration, and a reminder that we all have stories to tell of place and an evolving relationship to the landscape,”explained Melanie Boyle, Managing Director of the museum.
“In this increasingly digital age, you get to come in and you get to come really close to an incredible hand drawn map, with pencil crayon and notations. That physical presence is really valuable to any age, but particularly the younger generation who are perhaps more removed from the actual map making or being able to read a map in that physical presence. So I think again, like any art gallery museum, that opportunity to come face-to-face with actual documents, whether it's an object or a printed matter, is really valuable as a personal experience.”
Bonnie MacDonald, who is one of the museum’s Directors and a member of the exhibition committee, added, “A lot of people contribute to the museum. They pay their dues, they pay when they come in. A lot of people have helped to build this museum. I think it's really important that people on the island get to see the benefits of doing that. They get to see why they've contributed to our situation. They get to see some of the things that are in the archives, how well they're preserved. I think its really important for people to see what we do and what we're all about.”
