Over the last 40 years, Robert Banghart has come to know Alaska, and many of its small communities, quite well.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s worked on 11 different museums and cultural centers in communities around Alaska through his company, Banghart & Associates. He\u2019s also worked on a number of other projects around the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou get to know a community pretty well, because you\u2019re there to study its history and at the same time put that history on some sort of platform so people can engage themselves with it\u2026 You end up building these relationships and you get to see them grow as institutions and the personnel grow as professionals,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Most summers, he\u2019s taken off from museum work and he and his wife, Laura Lucas, have adventured \u2014 walking to Anaktuvuk Pass from the haul road, or kayaking around Southeast Alaska. He\u2019s also traveled many summers with a band he was playing with (he\u2019s been a part of a number of them). For a few years in the early 1980s, he and Lucas traveled around the state in the summers with their puppet theatre.<\/p>\n
This year, he\u2019s one of three people winning a Governor\u2019s Award for \u201cDistinguished Service to the Humanities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Banghart first arrived in Nenana, Alaska as a 17-year-old, and he\u2019s been here ever since, graduating from the University of Alaska with a degree in art and design in 1974.<\/p>\n
He first came to Juneau that year, while working as a studio potter. That\u2019s when he first ended up working on the state museum as a contractor, then working to build the museum\u2019s Eagle Tree \u2014 a new tree is now on display at the APK. He \u201chung his shingle out\u201d as a private contractor in 1976.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s worked on a number of museums over the years. A few are the Juneau-Douglas City Museum, the Skagway Museum, the Sheldon Jackson Museum in Sitka, the Inupiaq Heritage Center in Utqiagvik, previously known as Barrow; the University of Alaska Fairbanks Museum of the North, and the Museum of the Aleutians in Unalaska.<\/p>\n
One he found especially impacting, he said, was the Ilanka Cultural Center in Cordova.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was such a grassroots effort,\u201d he said. \u201cWe sat in a former Mason Hall and ate peanut butter sandwiches and drank coffee.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2016, Banghart finished up a role as the deputy director of the Division of Libraries, Archives and Museums, leading design and construction of the new facility in downtown Juneau during the construction of the Father Andrew P. Kashevaroff State Library, Archives and Museum building, dedicated June of 2016.<\/p>\n
As of Jan. 1, Banghart is back in the private sector.<\/p>\n
Now, he\u2019s interested \u201cin being at the confluence of all the various client-based needs that would form the idea of the project.\u201d<\/p>\n
He sits between all the different stakeholders, making sure everyone understands each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d be surprised how unique \u2026 each one of those languages is,\u201d he said of contractors, owners and architects. \u201cIt\u2019s all about communication \u2026 a successful project means everybody\u2019s having to sit down with a paper bag of what they can give up. (A successful project) means it\u2019s not one person\u2019s way, and that means compromise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Projects don\u2019t have to be museums, he said, but tend to be the kind of thing that people are interested in doing with others, not for themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cBuilding institutions and reinforcing community is the goal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Music<\/strong><\/p>\n After he finished up his most recent role with the museum he took a few months off, catching up on his work co-creating the music for the musical to the Pulitzer-prize-nominated novel \u201cThe Snow Child.\u201d<\/p>\n Banghart plays the fiddle, mandolin, and guitar. (He\u2019s one of only two people who have participated in every single Alaska Folk Festival, which he cofounded, since they began. He also cofounded Juneau Jazz & Classics.) He\u2019s made his living as a fiddle player in summers between museum gigs, playing with several bands over the years. Sometimes, the money he helped raise at benefit concerts even went to pay his salary.<\/p>\n The musical for \u201cThe Snow Child,\u201d the novel written by Alaska writer Eowyn Ivey, is a five piece string band. Banghart describes the music as \u201cAmericana with bluegrass instrumentation,\u201d but goes beyond that.<\/p>\n He\u2019s working with musician Georgia Stitt. The two of them come from different backgrounds, Banghart said. He comes from a \u201ctrad root, Americana root\u201d background, and Stitt\u2019s is in schools musical theatre.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re creating is a hybrid of those forms, in a broad sense,\u201d he said. \u201cIt has a really fresh sound to it \u2014 that\u2019s been the feedback from those who have heard it.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s being directed by Molly Smith, the founder of Perseverance Theatre, who\u2019s now artistic director at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC. That\u2019s where it\u2019ll premiere (the date will be announced in February) after which it will come to Juneau and Anchorage.<\/p>\n Banghart began composing for Perseverance Theatre in 1991, for \u201cThe Collected Works of Billy the Kid.\u201d He\u2019s scored more than a dozen plays and an opera, his biography for \u201cThe Snow Child\u201d says.<\/p>\n In his studio in Juneau, he\u2019s got a number of stringed instruments in need of love; he refurbishes them, both on his own and by commission.<\/p>\n Award<\/strong><\/p>\n The Distinguished Service to the Arts award recognizes \u201cindividuals, organizations or institutions who\/that have made a significant contribution to the humanities in Alaska.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn the museum world there\u2019s one word that defines the entire thing, and that\u2019s trust,\u201d Banghart said. \u201cThe trust that you have with your community that you\u2019re serving, and that they have in you. Without it, nothing works.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the last 40 years, Robert Banghart has come to know Alaska, and many of its small communities, quite well. He\u2019s worked on 11 different museums and cultural centers in communities around Alaska through his company, Banghart & Associates. He\u2019s also worked on a number of other projects around the state. \u201cYou get to know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":2313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2312"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}