It’s official – apparently.
Trustees of the Sheldon Museum and Cultural Center on Wednesday voted 5-1 in favor of changing the facility’s name to Haines Sheldon Museum. Trustee Diana Kelm cast the lone vote in opposition; trustee Lorrie Dudzik was absent.
The decision was made in just a few minutes and followed a month-long public solicitation for comment that elicited only a few responses, board chair Jim Shook reported.
Two written responses were split between keeping the name and “Haines Sheldon Museum,” two “vociferous” commenters on an independent Facebook page opposed any change, and one verbal comment supported “Sheldon Haines Museum,” according to Shook and museum director Helen Alten.
Dudzik, who attended the meeting briefly, made the push to strike “and cultural center” as well as the word “community,” that was included in an earlier preferred version. She called those words “superfluous, redundant, unnecessary and limiting.”
“Community museum would sound like community college, which is not a real college,” Dudzik said.
Said Shook, explaining the preference: “The idea was having Haines as the first word for marketing purposes and to identify this museum totally with the community that we absolutely love. The Haines Sheldon Museum says it all. It’s brief. We have a good HSM (acronym) for logos and we don’t need to have a business card that’s eight inches long.”
Some members said the name would make the museum easier to find, but trustee Kelm disagreed. “If you look in the telephone directory, you’ll find a dozen or two ‘Haines This’ or ‘Haines That.’”
Member John Carlson said as long as the Sheldon family was okay with the switch, he was all for it.
Shook said the name change shouldn’t require changing the verbiage on the museum’s founding documents.
The transition to the new name will be made piecemeal, and left up to the staff, board members said.
In October, the board voted to change the facility’s name to Haines Museum and Cultural Center. Longtime residents and relatives of museum founder Steve Sheldon objected to the change that they said diminished the family’s contributions to the facility.
Continuing confusion with Sitka’s Sheldon Jackson Museum also factored into the decision, board and staff members said.