Gallery sees record sales during Festival of Wreaths

The Humboldt & District Museum and Gallery held their annual Festival of the Wreaths auction on Dec. 3.

Festival of the Wreaths has been an annual fixture in Humboldt for the last 16 years. It started when the Friends of the Museum decided that they wanted to do additional fundraising for the community.

Although the event is called Festival of Wreaths, wreaths aren’t the only things donated.

“You’ve got things that are wreaths but you’ve also got a lot more. You’ve got original art and you’ve got books and you’ve got food, which is always really popular,” said

Director of Cultural Services with the City of Humboldt Jennifer Hoesgen.

This year’s event was very well attended with about 75 people on hand for the live auction and many more showing up to bid on the silent auction items.

The silent auction items were setup in the gallery for about 3 weeks allowing people a chance to come in early and get a start on the bidding.

“We had a good bidding crowd and the silent auction stuff had really good numbers on it even before the live auction started so we were just really happy with the turnout,” Hoesgen said.

The friends and the gallery are already looking at new ways to keep the festival fun and exciting for the coming year.

“We’re looking at new ideas for 2016 already, we’re kind of assessing, 2 years ago we introduced our jingle bottles, so people donate a bottle of wine and that is the second year in a row that, that has sold out. So we’re looking at next year to make it interesting whether we have contests or whatever. We always have new ideas coming forward so if somebody does have a great idea out there in the community that they’ve seen, that they want to try, we’re always open to changing it up and trying new things.”

The festival has continued to grow over the last 16 years.

Hoesgen recalled the first festival 16 years ago and a night of minus 35

“Nothing was on silent then, it was all live and we were so afraid that nobody would show up because it was really cold and show up they did and so we’ve just been doing it every year.”

The Festival has been moving from location to location bit is now finally settling into the gallery.

“This year we felt that we needed some more room for the festival and it’s a good thing that we did because we had the highest number of donated items that we’ve ever had. The community support was overwhelming,” said Hoesgen, before adding, “after 16 years it’s wonderful to have that much community support.”  

In addition to having the highest amount of donated items the auction also did very well generating over $7,500, the most to date.

The money raised from the event is going to go towards some new programs for the community.

Although they aren’t able to announce the new programs at this time, Hoesgen did mention that they will be performing arts programs that she hopes will get more events into the downtown and into the gallery as well.

The Friends of the Museum volunteer their time canvassing for donations, setting up the displays and planning the festival.

In addition to the support from the Friends of the Museum, the fundraiser is also aided by the support of the auctioneer team who donate their time and services as well.

Next up in the gallery is the youth art show which will run until the end of December.

During the month of December the museum will be host to an old fashioned Christmas exhibit, where kids are invited down to do some Christmas crafts. In the New Year, the gallery will be setting up a pair of art displays.