Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Association

Mission

The mission of the Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Association is to honor Vashon stories of love, life, oppression, action, and resilience. The Association tells Vashon stories, encouraging Islanders to take responsibility for what we do, knowing our actions influence history. As the Association collects, preserves, exhibits and interprets the history of Vashon and Maury Islands, we seek to engage, educate, and inspire our Island Community.

Description

The Vashon Heritage Museum comes under the umbrella of The Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Association, an organization originally established by early pioneers who settled on the Island in the late 19th century.

By providing exciting and innovative displays, the Vashon Heritage Museum stirs curiosity and engages its visitors with expertly curated exhibits supported by knowledgeable docents. With access to the wealth of knowledge collected through the VMIHA, the Museum educates its visitors by providing an accurate reflection of our community’s history and its place in the Pacific Northwest. The Museum inspires visitors by celebrating our shared heritage, connecting the past and present, and demonstrating how history influences our future.

As Vashon's main historical collecting organization, the Heritage Museum recognizes our unique responsibility to document and actively engage in gathering and preserving cultural material and stories that present the relevance of history as it occurs today. The Museum draws on its local collections to inspire special exhibitions, and dynamic programs to provide unique educational resources that enrich lives and engage diverse audiences across our island and the region.

The Museum works with a wide-range of community partners to present award-winning exhibits detailing the heritage and history of Vashon-Maury Island. Currently, we have on display the special exhibit "Natural Wonder: An Island Shaped by Water." Put on in partnership with the Vashon Nature Center, this special exhibit shares the wonders of the island's natural history and explores the ways in which all life is intricately connected and shaped by its relationship with the water that surrounds us. Visitors experience life through the wings, hooves, paws, roots, fins, tentacles, and feet of local species, make connections in our natural ecosystems and reflect on their own place in this great web of life. The exhibit, spanning both inside and outside the museum, provides a wide array of experiential educational programming.

We will reopen our museum in July 2024 after completing the renovation of our permanent exhibit. Our museum will shine a light on the diversity of cultural and ethnic histories that are part of the fabric of who we are. We will begin with the - sx̌ʷəbabš Native People of Vashon and tell the stories of the many ethnic and cultural groups who have made Vashon their home.

Gifts to the Heritage Museum not only support our exhibits, but they also help engage diverse audiences with our wide array of education programs, including school history contests, classroom programs and mini exhibits, our Vashon History Tour, our Historic Trail Programs, Strawberry Festival Ice Cream Social, Virginia V Historic Steam Boat Tour, Historical Barn Tour, our Past and Present lectures and virtual Museum Talk series, and the preservation, care, and archiving of 10,000 photos and artifacts ensuring they will be available for future generations.

For more information or to join or renew a membership visit our website: www.vashonheritagemuseum.org

Recognition

As Vashon-Maury Island's only free history museum, we are asking for your help. Dear friends, visitors, new members, and life-long supporters of the museum, show us your support, if you can, and consider making a donation to our beloved history museum.