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Sasquatch exhibit opens Friday at museum

CHERYL SCHWEIZER | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 7 years, 9 months AGO
by CHERYL SCHWEIZER
Senior Reporter Cheryl Schweizer is a journalist with more than 30 years of experience serving small communities in the Pacific Northwest. She began her post-high-school education at Treasure Valley Community College and enerned her journalism degree at Oregon State University. After working for multiple publications, she has settled down at the Columbia Basin Herald and has been a staple of the newsroom for more than a decade. Schweizer’s dedication to her communities and profession has earned her the nickname “The Baroness of Bylines.” She covers a variety of beats including health, business and various municipalities. | June 21, 2018 3:00 AM

MOSES LAKE — So. Is there something in the woods? Some big semi-hominid creature that’s possibly been seen but definitely never been captured? That’s the question posed by a new exhibit at the Moses Lake Museum & Art Center.

The opening reception for “Sasquatch Revealed” is at 5 p.m. Friday at the museum, 401 S. Balsam St. The evening will include a lecture by Paul Graves, “a Sasquatch investigator and researcher in the Wenatchee Valley” for about 25 years.

The exhibit will be on display through Aug. 24. A number of Sasquatch-related events are scheduled at the museum over the next two months.

The exhibit is on loan from curator Christopher Murphy, based on a 2004 exhibit he created for a Vancouver museum. Murphy called Sasquatch “a cultural phenomenon on the fringes of science.” The exhibit is provided free to public museums.

The traveling display has been on exhibit around the Pacific Northwest, the U.S. and Canada for more than a decade. It includes casts of footprints, stories from people who claim they have encountered unusual creatures in the wilderness, models of what a Sasquatch skull could look like, and stills from a famous 1967 film, shot in northern California, that could show a Bigfoot.

Museum officials have scheduled a number of other events in conjunction with exhibit. The July Free Family Saturday program July 7 will be a showing of “Harry and the Hendersons.” The 1987 movie follows the adventure of a suburban Seattle family after they hit a Bigfoot with the family car.

The museum is sponsoring a Sasquatch-themed art contest; submissions are due July 14. Seattle resident David George Gordon will talk about “cryptozoology” in a lecture July 28, part of the museum’s Summer Salon series. Cryptozoology is the search for legendary creatures, attempting to prove or disprove their existence.

Idaho State University professor Jeff Meldrum will give presentations Aug. 10 and 11. Meldrum is a professor of anthropology and anatomy at ISU, who has studied the evidence for and against the existence of Sasquatch for about two decades. He will discuss aspects of the Sasquatch phenomenon.

The opening reception will include a craft project for adults. The “adult swim” project is based on the idea setting aside time for adults at the swimming pool. Friday’s project involves using markers to decorate seashells.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected].

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