The finishing touches are being put on the new Father Andrew P. Kashevaroff State Library, Archives and Museum, widely known as the SLAM building, as facility managers prepare for its grand opening on June 6.
The nearly $140 million facility combines the state library’s information services and historical collections as well as the state’s archives and state museum into one 118,000-square-foot building.
Bob Banghart, deputy director of libraries, archives and museums, gave us an early tour of the facility last week. Here’s a sneak peak.
An old favorite from the Alaska State Museum was installed in the building before the roof was closed.
Because of its size, the eagle-laden tree’s trunk had to be lowered into position by crane. The roof was then completed, the tree unwrapped and the eagles installed.
A Ketchikan artist’s first foray into glass will be the dividing line between the library and research center of the state library.
Evon Zerbetz’s 10-foot tall, 80-foot long piece was scanned to black and white and then printed on the glass, then Zerbetz worked with the color and additional layers of glassing to give it a 3-D aspect.
The 55 workers moving into the building were still unpacking in the two weeks before the building was scheduled to open.
The brilliant green Nimbus was first partially restored. The restoration work included a fresh coat of paint in 2015 when the sculpture was installed on new steel beam framework.
Canadian sculptor Robert Murray traveled to Juneau to inspect the restoration in progress and make sure that the sculpture’s arch form fit in with its surroundings.
Nimbus has been criticized for both its abstract form and color in the four decades that it has been in Juneau. The National Endowment for the Arts, the Alaska Court System and the Alaska State Council for the Arts originally funded the sculpture. In 1984, disgruntled state lawmakers found a way to force Gov. Bill Sheffield to remove the sculpture from the court building site.
