(Photo courtesy Log House Museum)
Making weekend plans? It’s your last chance to visit the home of West Seattle history, the Log House Museum, during its regular hours 12-4 pm Saturday and Sunday – after Sunday, it’s closing for a few weeks to get a new exhibit in place. Southwest Seattle Historical Society executive director Clay Eals shares the announcement:

Mark your calendar for Saturday, March 15, 2014, for the opening of a new exhibit at the Log House Museum of the Southwest Seattle Historical Society.

The new exhibit is the second phase of a three-phase exhibit whose overall title is “Telling Our Westside Stories.” The theme of the second phase is “Work.”

The first-phase exhibit, with the theme of “Land,” has been up since fall 2012 and will close on Sunday, Feb. 23. (Regular open hours are noon to 4 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays. The museum is located at 3003 61st Ave. S.W., one block from Alki Beach.)

To take down the first-phase exhibit and install the second-phase exhibit, staff will close the museum from Thursday, Feb. 27, through Friday, March 14.

The new exhibit will open to the public at noon Saturday, March 15. It will examine various types of work done over the years by residents of the Duwamish peninsula and their attitudes toward it.

Besides artifacts, photos and printed interview excerpts, the exhibit will focus on brief videos that tell stories visually in the museum’s main gallery.

The bulk of the material generated for the “Telling Our Westside Stories” exhibits comes from interviews of community elders conducted by students at Madison Middle School and supervised by volunteers of the Southwest Seattle Historical Society.

Volunteers have transcribed the interviews, culled related images and combined interview excerpts and images into brief videos.

“Eliciting and preserving the stories of our residents is an important part of what we do,” says Clay Eals, executive director. “It is straight down the middle of our mission to promote local heritage through education, preservation and advocacy.”

The exhibit, curated by Sarah Baylinson, museum manager, is funded in part by 4Culture and the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods.

The Log House Museum is at 61st/Stevens, a block inland from the heart of Alki.