By Sandy Mazza
The new Catalina Island Museum opened on Saturday, June 18, 2016. (Courtesy photo)
Catalina Island's downtown Avalon is celebrating its largest development in nearly 100 years this weekend.
The small town, where time moves a bit slower than on the mainland, locals get around on golf carts and big changes are few and far between, on Saturday welcomed its first dedicated museum, the Catalina Island Museum, in the Ada Blanche Wrigley Schreiner Building.
Construction just finished on the $9.2 million facility, designed as a temple for the island's rich 7,000-year history of early Southern California settlement by Tongva and Gabrielino villages, a getaway destination for Hollywood elite in the 1930s and a living laboratory for biologists, geologists and marine researchers.
Until now, island history was crammed into a small display at the Catalina Casino entertainment venue, a round art deco building constructed in 1929 that has become the most recognizable landmark in town. The Casino is the island's last major construction project and stands out among the small gift shops and eateries lining Avalon's main strip, not far from where thousands of visitors from cruise ships and ferries disembark daily during summer season.
Michael DeMarsche, executive director of the Catalina Island Museum, said the facility's mission of sharing island history will swell to include many more art installations. The first rotating exhibit on display, "Bettie Page Uncovered: The Unknown Photographs of Bunny Yeager," has rarely seen shots of the 1950s pinup star.
"We expanded our vision," DeMarsche said. "Your trip to Catalina Island won't be complete until you really understand how magnificent the island's history is. The special exhibitions will rotate three to five times a year so that, if you visited already, you have a reason to come back."
Gallery photographs of the island's heyday as a refuge for celebrities in the 1930s and '40s include a shot of Norma Jeane Dougherty when she lived on the island before becoming iconic movie star Marilyn Monroe, and Charlie Chaplin posing with his wife, Paulette Goddard, during a beachside cruise on a two-seater bicycle.
The Chicago Cubs held spring training on the island for 30 years, and it was a vacation destination for Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, and Winston Churchill. Images of these past eras will be on display in the William Wrigley Jr. Gallery. Also on display are "plein air" paintings capturing the island in differing displays of natural light.