The Juneau-Douglas City Museum on Tuesday, June 9, 2026. (Photo by Clarise Larson/KTOO)
After more than eight years leading the Juneau-Douglas City Museum as its director, Beth Weigel’s last day is Thursday, July 9.
Weigel was one of two full-time staff members laid off after the Assembly decided to cut $261,000 from the museum’s annual funding as part of an effort to address a multimillion-dollar recurring budget shortfall.
In her final weeks with the city, Weigel wanted to see some projects through. One of them was preserving an almost 60-year old totem pole – Harnessing of the Atom Kootéeyaa – carved by renowned Lingít carver and artist Amos Wallace. It was a two-year project that Weigel helped fundraise for and coordinated with various entities. The totem pole previously stood outside the museum and was recently remounted inside the Mendenhall Valley Public Library.
Harnessing of the Atom totem pole, carved by renowned Lingít carver and artist Amos Wallace, was remounted at the Mendenhall Valley Public Library on June 26, 2026. (Photo courtesy of Beth Weigel)
“That’s what we do. We take care of objects and we take care of our history and the past, and make sure that that’s known, so as we go forward, we have a place that’s rooted – that we know where we’ve come from and where we can go,” Weigel said.
Prior to leading the museum, Weigel worked at the Juneau Public Libraries for close to 5 years. And before that, she was a ski instructor at Eaglecrest. Weigel says she’s always thought of herself as a public servant.
And she thinks of the city museum as the community’s museum: “It’s the people’s history; it’s not the City and Borough of Juneau’s history. That’s in there, obviously, but it’s all of our community, and everybody’s stories can be shared there.”
Weigel said it’s a blow to the community to reduce the museum staffing and hours, to lose services and programming that she says are beloved and vital – and bring in revenue. She calls the assembly’s cuts to the museum “short-sighted.”
“I just don’t understand why an organization harms itself in that way,” she said.
In addition to reducing funding to the museum, the Assembly approved eliminating an administrative support position in the city’s administration department, closing and selling Mount Jumbo Gym, and reducing funding to Travel Juneau, the city’s landscaping budget, the Juneau Economic Development Council and the Jensen-Olson Arboretum.
Budget cut consequences
Of the less than four total full-time positions that make up the museum staff, July 9 is also the last day for two other full-time people: Curator of Programs and Education Elissa Borges and the Curator of Collections and Exhibitions Dara Lohnes-Davies. Borges was laid off, along with the Weigel, and Lohnes-Davies is moving on to another job outside the city due to the lack of job security.
The city is pursuing a short-term person to fill the curator of collections and exhibitions temporarily while going through a full recruitment process.
That leaves one part-time position – an administrative assistant – that’s three-quarter time.
“A reduction of this magnitude will result in reductions to programming,” said Deputy City Manager Robert Barr. “There won’t be a lot of programming that will be able to be sustained with only .75 FTE. Some of the programs that the museum offers are run by volunteers, so I don’t want to say that necessarily all programs will be eliminated.”
The museum paused its guided walking tours, though State Capitol Building Tours are still being offered. During the budget process, city staff told the Assembly the roughly $260,000 reduction would also eliminate the museum’s capacity to host programs like First Fridays, exhibit openings and school class visits.
Instead of being open seven days a week in the summer, the museum is moving down to a Wednesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. schedule starting Friday, July 10.
“We are actively doing what we can to try and provide a level of access to the museum during the summer, which is our busiest time, and within the constraints of the changes to our staffing,” said Director of Juneau Public Libraries Catherine Melville, who will be overseeing museum operations when Weigel leaves. The city museum is under the umbrella of the city’s libraries department.
For the immediate future, the museum is in the process of hiring seasonal museum attendants through a $45,000 grant from Norwegian Cruise Line.
An unclear path forward
Regarding a transition plan and a path forward, Melville says the situation is challenging and the city is in the process of figuring it out.
“Because of the nature of our budget process and the fact that we only just wrapped up that decision-making process a very short time ago, there hasn’t been a super long amount of time to tackle everything, so we’re working on it,” she said.
The lack of clarity going forward is part of why Lohnes-Davies, curator of collections and exhibits, has decided to leave the museum for another job, even though she wasn’t laid off.
“There was no confidence that I was getting from above that they knew what they were going to do without the director or the public program person, or even what that really meant to the structure of the museum,” she said. “It kind of felt like they were setting the museum up to close in the near future anyway, and that it would be in my best interest to jump while I could, as opposed to waiting it out and seeing what they decide to do.”
Lohnes-Davies and her husband relocated to Juneau three years ago for the museum job and had their first child here.
“I need to be able to pay rent and keep a roof over our heads. That’s kind of what it boils down to,” she said.
Next chapters
Lohnes-Davies has accepted a job at Sealaska Heritage Institute as its manager of collections and curation.
As for Weigel, she has a new job as well. She’s going to be the new records information manager at Alaska Electric Light & Power.
“I get to continue to work with archival materials and artifacts,” she said. “I’m just really excited to help tell the power generation story of our history in Juneau, because it’s fascinating.”
There is one last museum project Weigel is looking forward to – a free author talk and book signing with Patrick Bringley, author of the New York Time bestselling memoir, All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me.
It’s at the UAS Egan Lecture Hall on Friday, July 10, at 7 p.m. – the day after Weigel’s last day at the museum. Weigel helped bring about the city museum’s exhibit inspired by his book, and on getting Bringley to come to Juneau. She hopes a lot of people show up; it may, she said, be one of the last big programs the museum’s able to put on.
