Bye-Bye, Burke

3/29/19 Old Burke Museum building being demolished.

While I’ve been eagerly awaiting the opening of the brand new Burke Museum this fall, I somehow missed the news that the old Burke building, built in 1962, was being torn down. I thought it would be cleaned up and repurposed – or maybe that was just wishful thinking. In any case, as I walked across the University of Washington campus last Friday on my way to the cherry blossoms on the Quad, I was flabbergasted to see that the old Burke was being demolished. While the gaping foundation still stood in the background, an excavator was building a mountain of debris in the museum’s former parking lot.

As many times as I have sketched the skeletons and other natural artifacts inside the Burke, especially on rainy days while my car was being serviced nearby (it was my favorite way to kill that oil-changing time), I had never sketched the building itself. And all those years that I had walked by the Burke when I was a UW student suddenly flashed before my eyes. Filled with regret, I felt obliged to at least sketch its remains even as they were being heaped into dump trucks.

I must admit, though, that sketching an excavator helped to ease my grief. In fact, I decided that’s where all the action was, so I sketched it again with a bit more detail.

3/29/19 Where the action is!