Silver City Museum

About

The Silver City Museum Society, a private 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, founded in 1985 to provide financial and volunteer support to the Museum.

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The Silver City Museum Society, a private 501(c)(3) non-profit organization provides supplementary financial and volunteer support to the Silver City Museum. The Museum Society augments operational support from the Town of Silver City, enhancing Museum programming and public services with supplementary staffing (paid and volunteer), equipment, and outreach support. Society funding has supported speaker honoraria, exhibit materials and transportation fees, professional development, printing, publications, and special project support. The organization has successfully conducted several capital campaigns, generating $800,000 worth of facilities improvements for the Museum in the past 18 years.

Society fundraising efforts have resulted in major upgrades to the Silver City Museum facility, including a large expansion/improvement project in 1988 which created a professional quality collections care wing and exhibition gallery; development of a landscaped courtyard and parking lots in 1989; extensive rehabilitation of the historic H.B. Ailman house in 1993-94; another major landscape project dedicated in 1997; and an addition and improvements to the collections care wing in 2002. Another ambitious volunteer-led project saw the reconstruction of the original east porch of the Ailman House and conversion of the original kitchen to a meeting facility.

Volunteers support the Museum in numerous ways and without them the museum would not be what it is today. Volunteer opportunities are wide-ranging and we encourage residents to contact the SCMS and see how they can join the team. Volunteers are very appreciated and the board chooses a Volunteer of the Month.

The Society presents a variety of public events and programs throughout the year, including an ongoing Brown Bag lunch-time presentation series, Museum exhibit openings, guided Museum tours, popular annual events such as the Fourth of July Ice Cream Social and Victorian Christmas Evening, and a wide variety of community gatherings and performances in the Museum Courtyard.

A twelve-member board administers the Society's business and budget, with an additional voting position reserved for a representative from the Town Museum Board. The Museum Director is a non-voting Society board member.

For more information, please email [email protected], visit us on Twitter at @scmuseumsociety, or visit our homepage at silvercitymuseumsociety.org