“It’s just such an honor if you think about all the museums across the country, big and small,” Wild Center Executive Director Stephanie Ratcliffe said. “To be recognized by IMLS in this way, it’s kind of affirming.”

She said the nomination is “validation of the tireless work by everyone at The Wild Center.” She said they’re usually “head down, working,” but to look up and see the company they’re keeping in the museum community is encouraging.

Ratcliffe said she knows of many of the museums which have been finalists in recent years.

“To even be in that orbit of museums that I admire … it just feels really good,” she said.

The Wild Center’s “Shuga Master” Shannon Surdyk fills a maple sap boiler with more wood. The museum’s Community Maple Program, which Surdyk oversees is one of the things Wild Center Executive Director Stephanie Ratcliffe said she’s most proud of. The museum is a finalist for the nation’s highest museum award this year. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

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The award

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The medal, awarded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, has been given out to 176 institutions since 1996, honoring institutions which demonstrate “extraordinary and innovative approaches to community service.”

The Wild Center is one of two finalists in New York this year, the other being Children’s Museum of Manhattan.

Ratcliffe described the Wild Center as a small-to-medium-sized museum.

National Medal winners will be announced the first week of June, and a national ceremony and celebration will be held in July.

There are 15 museums and 15 libraries on the IMLS’ finalist list. The award is typically given to equal numbers of institutions from each category. The amount of museums and libraries awarded varies from year-to-year.

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Becoming a finalist

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Ratcliffe said the last few years have come with hard work adapting to the coronavirus pandemic, but also with bursts of creativity — adding digital programs and outdoor events like Wild Lights.

The Wild Center is an outdoor place that they made a safe space for families looking for recreation when there weren’t many options.

Last summer, the museum almost reached pre-pandemic numbers of visitors, she said.

The Wild Center is closed this month, and when it reopens in May, Ratcliffe said they plan to run it as normal, pre-COVID.

“The innovation demonstrated during the pandemic of pivoting to digital in our Youth Climate Program and our daily programming, and successfully redesigning our on-site experience for safe operations was proof that we maintained our mission despite unprecedented conditions,” Wild Center Board of Trustees Chair Karen Thomas said in a statement.

“This selection as finalist inspires us to continue our work to connect people to the natural world around them — which is more important now than ever,” Ratcliffe wrote.

The Wild Center’s goal is to get people to love their environment and care for it, she said.

“The North Country’s pristine environment is a defining feature of many of our communities, and I am proud of The Wild Center’s efforts to honor the rich environmental history of our district and equip visitors with the knowledge they need to protect our environment for generations to come,” U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, said in a statement.

Ratcliffe said the Wild Center’s work educating people about climate change is unique, important and at the forefront of how museums worldwide are addressing a existential threat to the planet.

“IMLS is looking at the national landscape. This kind of award says to me that they see the work we’re doing as innovative and at the forefront of our field,” she said.

She said a new climate exhibit will open at the Wild Center in July, highlighting regional people working on solutions to a global issue.

The message, Ratcliffe said, is that there are solutions that can work, they just need to be scaled up.

She said a museum’s goal should be to stay relevant to people’s everyday lives.

Ratcliffe also said the IMLS factors in a museum’s work with its community when choosing finalists. She said the Wild Center strives to be a “community anchor.”

The Wild Center gets 100,000 visitors a year, but Ratcliffe said it’s the small projects that serve the community that she’s most proud of. Projects like the Community Maple Program, which takes in raw maple sap from 45 families who tap trees in Tupper Lake and boils it down into syrup.

The program provides families with the tools they need, centralizes the boiling to one location and returns 70% of the resulting syrup to families in return for a cut to sell, and the opportunity to show visitors how maple sugaring works.

The Wild Center’s “Shuga Master” Shannon Surdyk said maple sugaring is a good window into the impacts of climate change. She said as winters become shorter and more unreliable, the effect of carbon emissions can be seen plain as day.

Syrup is supposed to get darker as the season goes on and the weather gets warmer, getting sweeter at the same time. But this year, the vials of syrup from each boil Surdyk keeps in the sugar shack got lighter as the season progressed. She said this was because the season started off very warm in the winter and then got cold again in the spring.

It’s things like this that Ratcliffe says makes the Wild Center a special place to work and visit.

“We’re already a winner!” she exclaimed as she walked away from the sugar shack.