06/09/2026
🌟Member Spotlight🌟
Dylainie Nathlich
Most challenging aspect of your job as Executive Director of the Palmer Museum of History and Art?
Funding. When it’s stable, it allows us to maintain a productive workflow that benefits the institution, the people who work here, and the community we serve.
Do you have pets?
My dog is Spartacus, Sparty for short. He’s a 4-year-old mix of German Shorthaired Pointer and Chocolate Labrador. I got him when he was four months old from a backyard breeder in Anchorage in 2022. When we lived in California, we started running canicross races (trail running with your dog leading), and I hope to learn how to skijor with him now that we’re in Alaska.
What’s your favorite piece of outdoor gear and why do you like it?
Probably my running vest, although, sadly, I lost it recently. The Norvan 7 Hydration Vest from Arc’teryx was great for running and training with my dog. It had plenty of space for snacks for me and training treats for him, and the back pouch easily held his water bowl and leash for longer trail runs.
Any good book or movie recommendations?
I recently started reading How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell, and it felt unexpectedly personal. Jenny is an art and art history lecturer at Stanford University and writes about retreating to overlooked woods, trails, and edges of metropolitan areas in the San Francisco Bay Area, places she describes as “not optimized for efficiency.” Those passages resonated deeply with me, because I’ve sought out many of the same spaces she writes about as a way to slow down and reconnect. It’s a refreshing and grounding read, offering a thoughtful, educated response to the industrial and tech-driven overload that much of our modern world has become.
