‘Community Conversations’ with Jemima Harr, Humboldt Arts Council

This is a press release from the City of Eureka:

I’m Jemima Harr. I’m the Executive Director and Curator of the Humboldt Arts Council and the Morris Graves Museum of Arts. The Humboldt Arts Council is the local partner for the California Arts Council, and we operate the Morris Graves Museum of Art, which is probably our biggest program that we do in the community.

We have owned and operated the Museum since the year 2000. It’s a historic building. We were the former Carnegie Library, and it really is kind of the heart of the arts as well as the heart of history in Humboldt County. And in Eureka, this library has brought so much joy to people. They come into the museum and say, oh, you know, I remember when I checked out my first book. So this building means a lot to the community.

We have programs that go out into the schools. We take part of our permanent collection out into the schools, and work with our docent council. They do art banks. We do family programs here at the museum. We also have musical performances. And all of that, I look forward to coming back, hopefully in the future!

We are open during normal operating hours, and we see a lot of traffic during the week. During the weekends, we’ve had a ton of people from outside of the area and a ton of people from across the country over the summer. We’ve seen a lot of foot traffic just coming to visit the museum.

The show that we’re currently in a Louis Marak exhibition. He’s a retired professor from HSU, a beautiful show. It’s a long time coming, too. We had his show scheduled probably almost three years ago that happened to coincide with the pandemic. So finally, we get to be able to have his exhibition open to the public. We do have a handful of pieces in our permanent collection by him as well.

And then across the way in the Thonson Gallery, we have an exhibition that is actually related a bit to the pandemic. It was an artist grant program that we actually paid artists to create work under the theme of re-emerging from the pandemic. Last year, we did an exhibition called Art in Place, which was a grant program for artists to create art while we were all sheltering in place. So this is kind of the follow up of it.

We have pieces from our permanent collection downstairs, as well as upstairs with our Victor Jacoby exhibition. So we have a wide range of things for people to enjoy at the moment.

I absolutely love Eureka. When I first moved here, having gone to Humboldt State, I thought, oh, I’m going to move to Arcata. And when I came around here, I thought, this is where I want to live. And I think that it’s that small town feel where you know the checkers at the supermarket. You know all the other little businesses, and they know you personally as well. I mean, I feel like when people walk into the museum, I know their dogs’ names. We all feel like a family here in Eureka.

I’ve always been involved in the arts since I was a child. My parents took me to museums when I was three weeks old. So it was something that was a passion of mine, basically my whole life. I graduated from Humboldt State with a degree in Art History and Museum and Gallery Practices. So when I saw a job opening here after working in the Bay Area for a while, I jumped on it because I love this area, I love everything about our close-knit community. And especially the arts here. The arts are just amazing. I mean, I think in Eureka, it’s hard to go anywhere without encountering something artistic. It’s really involved in all of our daily lives. So I think that’s the one thing that I find so special about this area.

I came here from working at UC Davis and when we would have an opening reception, if we got 50 guests, it was amazing. We thought we did so good. And I came up for my interview and had my first experience at Arts Alive. And when I saw 2,000 people come through this museum in a three-hour period, I was blown away. It’s so great to see that every aspect, every person in our community takes advantage of the cultural and arts that we have to offer. So, I think that’s, what’s so amazing about this area is that everyone feels a part of it.