Holiday Exhibit

Burl Ives Holiday Exhibit at the Anacortes Museum all December

Abominable selfies are back!

Stage your season’s greeting with life-size figures from the “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” holiday TV special narrated by the late Burl Ives.

Each year since 2017, the Anacortes Museum has celebrated the bumbles and misfit toys with a winter tribute to Rudolph and friends. This year, the holiday characters are peeking out from the museum’s ground-floor windows and on display upstairs in the Carnegie Gallery at 1305 8^th Street for the entire month of December. 

The large Christmas cutout murals depict characters from the 1964 animated Christmas TV special "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer," which featured Burl Ives as the narrator and voice of Sam the Snowman. These Christmas decorations were placed out each year in Anacortes on Burl and Dorothy Ives' street frontage at 2804 Oakes Ave., to the community's great delight. The murals, painted on wood by Eddie Strivens of Anacortes, range from about 2 feet to 7.5 feet in height.

In 1990, Burl Ives moved to Anacortes. He indulged his hobbies and became involved in his community, helping to raise funds for a pediatric facility and cultural center. But soon Ives' health began to suffer. On April 14, 1995, Ives died with Dorothy and his three stepchildren at his side.

(Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a 1964 Christmas stop-motion animated television special produced by Videocraft International, Ltd. (later known as Rankin/Bass Productions) and currently distributed by Universal Television. It first aired Sunday, December 6, 1964, on the NBC television network in the United States, and was sponsored by General Electric under the umbrella title of The General Electric Fantasy Hour. The special was based on the Johnny Marks song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" which was itself based on the poem of the same name written in 1939 by Marks' brother-in-law, Robert L. May.  –Wikipedia)

Anacortes Museum, 1305 8th Street, Anacortes, WA 98221

OPEN Tuesday - Saturday, 10AM - 4PM
Sunday, 1PM - 4PM
CLOSED Mondays