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How long have you been working for the Basque Museum and Cultural Center?

I was on the original board of directors that was established in November 1985. I continued to serve on the board until 1993 when they asked me to become the Executive Director. I told my Mother that I was just going to work here for three years as I knew how much time it would take to manage the place. New ideas are always coming up for the next project….so after almost 21 years as the Executive Director, I’m proud to say that I’ve never had a boring day of work. Always a diverse schedule of work to be done with the special part of the work at the Museum being able to interact with many wonderful people.

The Basque Museum and Cultural Center is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2015; are there any special events planned to celebrate the occasion?

We just celebrated the Museum’s 30th Anniversary with our Benefit Dinner and Auction this past Saturday, April 11th. 200 guests joined us in support of the Museum and Boiseko Ikastola. Jesus Alcelay prepared a delicious meal and many generous individuals and businesses supported us with donations of items to auction. The “Heritage Award” was given to two individuals for their outstanding contribution to preserve, promote, and perpetuate Basque history and culture. One award went to Albert “Al” Erquiaga, who served on the original board of the Basque Museum in 1985 and has continued to support the organization since that time and the other was awarded to Patricia “Pat” Fletcher who has worked weekly as a volunteer in the Museum Store and giving tours to the many school groups and visitors who come to the Museum.

Boiseko Ikastola, the Museum’s language-immersion preschool, has been located in part of the St. Paul’s Catholic Student Center on the campus of Boise State University since it was established in 1998. St. Paul’s is expanding and is in need of the space that the Ikastola currently occupies, so after much forethought and decision-making the Museum purchased a building on March 2nd. Much work has already been done by volunteers and contractors who will be working together to open the doors to this wonderful new preschool for the summer session. The Board of Directors is committed to provide the opportunity for children, at a young age, to be exposed to Euskara and to special celebrations of Basque culture with the hope that it will lay a foundation for continued study in the future.

The Basque Museum will be creating new exhibits on boarding houses and Basque dance for Jaialdi, will move their current exhibit on pilota to another gallery in the building for viewing and will have the smaller, traveling exhibit of the “Hidden in Plain Sight: The Basques,” available for the public to view at the fairgrounds location during the festival. A team has also been working on collecting video oral history recordings, photographs, and information from various sources as part of the research for these exhibits.

Our 30th year will be celebrated with a new Ikastola building, new exhibits, multi-lingual audio tours and more photographs and information for our collections. It will be a busy, but very fruitful one for the Basque Museum & Cultural Center!

What makes the Museum special?

It is the only museum focusing specifically on Basque history and culture in the United States. Our initial collections of artifacts, photographs, and archival materials focused mainly on Basques in the Boise area and in other communities in Idaho. Over the past decade, there has been an effort to present topics related to Basque history that are not specific to this area and give a better representation of Basques, in general, throughout the country. Two themes currently on exhibit in the main gallery focus on frontons in the US and boarding houses in the US and an effort has been made to obtain photographs on as many of these two important symbols of Basque presence in the country as possible. Various states are represented and give the visitor an idea of the numbers of frontons (over 80 identified) and boarding houses (close to 400 identified) that are represented throughout the country. The “Hidden in Plain Sight: The Basques” exhibit, created by the Basque Museum in 2010, is another example of the Museum’s effort to represent the Basques in the US – demonstrating the impact they have made in many different states in this country as well as in the history of the world.

What does the future of the Basque Museum and Cultural Center look like?

The future is bright for the Basque Museum & Cultural Center. Our “Vision 20/20” strategic plan, created in 2010 to help guide the Museum’s course over the next ten years, has been integral to the direction we’ve taken over the past five years. Tremendous support by individuals and businesses of the Museum’s “Expanding Horizons Campaign” during that same time period has now given us a long-term investment fund that can be used to help expand our efforts in the areas of education, collections, and exhibits. Over the course of the next five years I envision an expansion in the areas of educational outreach and the creation of more resource materials, the collection of many more oral histories, photographs, and archival materials from communities throughout the United States, with much of this information included on the Internet for public research. We will create exhibits focusing on various topics related to Basque history and culture and plan to assist local historical groups to create interpretive panels about the Basques in their respective communities to help tell the stories of the many immigrants who came here and settled in towns and cities across the country. In the future the Basque Museum & Cultural Center will continue to reach beyond its boundaries to preserve, promote, and perpetuate Basque history and culture.

Basques is a free monthly newsletter published online by :

Delegation of the Basque Country in the US
820 2nd Avenue, Suite 13B
New York, NY 10017
Tel: +1.646.368.6040
Email: usa@euskadi.eus