We stopped in Philomath the other day to check in with Irene Zenev at the Benton County Historical Society Museum. There they also house the Horner Collection, formerly at OSU but transferred in 2008 to Benton County. On the Horner Colection website is a nice slide show of the moving of this collection…the result of the collecting of John Horner…
And the challenge of the collection is that includes sooo much. We were there, for instance, to see a Louis Bunce PWA painting (the predecessor of the WPA in the depression)…”the Butchers”…1934 (Bunce actually worked in a meat packing plant as a young man…)
but we got to see much much more, including the beautiful new storage system…
the 1965 departmental computer from OSU…(and your iPhone has more power and capactiy than this unit!)
the original sign that inspired Bernard Malamud’s novel title “The Fixer” (Malamud spent a year at OSU long ago)
some Darrel Austin paintings from the WPA years…
flax…
detail of a Yakima tribal canoe being returned to the tribe…
and then the amazing Taxidermy collection…(I forgot the picture of the full sized adult Moose…)
along with this photo showing a float in a 1910 parade in Corvallis…the Taxidermy collection out for a ride!
Amazed and delighted we said our goodbyes and headed for the beach where Saturday was sunny and mild, and Sunday was not too blustery for a bike ride…
On The Way 
Love Irene, and love the Benton County Museum. They were the first museum to exhibit my quilts, and we’re having another exhibition this year for Quilt County – groovy 1970s quilts!
That owl is beautiful!
Bill Volckening…Irene told us about the show…I’ll have quilts at the Corvallis Art Center at the same time… September will rock!
the web of early computer wiring and the flax photo echo each other, though the flax seems by far the most friendly mass.