From the MAH's Executive Director: Robb Woulfe

As a nonprofit organization, part of our mission each and every day is to bring people together around art, history, and culture to build a stronger, more connected community.

Although we cannot bring people together physically during this crisis, we have been working on ways to bring our community together online through film screenings, virtual exhibitions, and educational programming. In response to the shelter-in-place orders, we have been forced to remain closed and cancel live events through May. For a list of postponed activities, as well as virtual offerings as they become available, please click here.

We continue to explore many different options to help offset the significant financial impacts of the museum’s indefinite closure and related cancellations, and to ensure a sustainable and resilient MAH, now and into the future. Like many of our partners and colleagues, we had to make the difficult but necessary decision to implement a number of immediate actions, including reducing our staffing levels through layoffs and reduced hours, curtailing spending, and identifying other cost containment measures.

We are using this time to assess how the MAH can best serve and support our diverse community of members, guests, partners, artists, historians, and cultural creators. We are looking at new admission policies, expanding our exhibition space beyond the museum walls, balancing our strong participatory programming with thought-provoking and awe-inspiring works by artists from near and far, and inviting our cultural partners to use our space as a resource to further their own missions.

Together with our board, we will do everything we can to serve and support our community through this extraordinary time, and with the reconnecting and rebuilding that comes next. Once it is safe and prudent to do so, we look forward to welcoming everyone back to the MAH, and hope that you will join us in continuing our work of uplifting the voices, traditions, and stories of Santa Cruz County. Until then, stay well.

Thank you for your continued support.

– Robb Woulfe, Executive Director