WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — For the past couple of years, it seemed like the Main Street Museum had something going on several nights a week.

Movie clubs screen offbeat films on weeknights. A slate of bands, both local and from around the region, might fill up a Saturday night. The What Doth Life Festival, featuring bands from the Windsor-based music collective, found a home at the museum. And, of course, there are regular visual art exhibitions, the museum’s permanent collection of oddities and Friday evening player piano sessions with the museum’s founder and director David Fairbanks Ford. This week is busy, too, about which there’s more below.

While the museum is run by a range of volunteers, Joie Finley has been at the beating heart of a lot of this activity. At the end of the year, Finley plans to pull back. She’ll still do the museum’s books and volunteer for occasional events, but she’s also taking care of her mother and the two roles are hard to reconcile.

In a phone conversation this week, Finley credited the many people who have a hand in keeping the old firehouse at 58 Bridge St., in White River Junction full of lively events, but she also acknowledged that change is coming.

The museum’s devotees “shouldn’t be afraid if the museum goes quiet for a little bit,” after the turn of the year, Finley said.

Last month, Finley warned that the museum might have to close if more volunteers didn’t step up to manage events.

This is not as dire as it sounds. Ford owns the museum’s home at 58 Bridge St., in White River Junction, so it has a secure location. Finley was issuing a wake-up call to the many people who love the museum.

“There’s so many volunteers who work behind the scenes,” said Finley, a Hartland native who’s retired from coordinating homeless programs for Tri-County CAP, now based in Berlin, N.H. “I just happen to be the one who’s on the internet all the time.”

Finley has slowly become the second most recognizable face at the museum, after Ford. She started volunteering there eight years ago at the suggestion of Nick Charyk. In addition to chairing the museum’s board, Charyk also ran Matt Dunne’s 2016 campaign for Vermont governor. Finley was a campaign volunteer, and after Dunne, also a Hartland native, lost in the Democratic primary, Charyk suggested she volunteer at the museum.

In the years since, she and Ford and the many other volunteers have made the museum a buzzing hive for a range of arts programming that likely wouldn’t have a home elsewhere in the Upper Valley. Quirky art? Check. Risqué vaudeville acts? Check. Teenage punk bands? Weird sci-fi movies? Chico Eastridge wearing a gold lamé suit? Elvis’ gall stones? Oh, yes.

“She claims that she’s the chief cook and bottle-washer, but she’s much more than that,” Ford said this week.

For years, he’s wanted the museum to have an operating budget sufficient to hire even a part-time staffer. But the museum doesn’t draw the kind of big donations such a leap would require. Finley said the museum takes in around $50,000 a year and spends $49,000 of it. Goodness knows how much all the volunteer hours are worth.

While other arts nonprofits are bringing in big year-end donations, the Main Street Museum has a little under $1,300 left to raise to meet a $5,000 matching grant put up by two supporters.

What has long seemed clear to me is that many people who claim to love the arts don’t get the Main Street Museum.

Ford’s alternative curatorial project, which examines everyday objects in unexpected contexts, is very subtle. And the general humbleness of the enterprise runs counter to the lofty air of prestige that most arts organizations breathe.

At the same time, it’s hard to imagine the MSM not running on a shoestring budget. If some big donor comes along, wouldn’t it change the place’s scrappy spirit?

“We’re like the poorest nonprofit in town,” Finley said. “I like the hand-to-mouth model,” but a bit more money would help.

Finley said she’s proud of what the museum has been able to do just with volunteers. Artists who had gallery shows this year all made some money from sales and the museum was able to pay the bands who played. “Artists deserve to be paid,” Finley said.

My favorite aspect of the museum has been the growth of music programming. There are so few outlets for young musicians to play gigs or go to shows that the museum has a niche of its own.

That continues this Saturday night with Larry Larryson’s Rocking Extreme Xmas, a sequence of words the likes of which I’ve never typed before. The bands on the bill, organized by What Doth Life, include Lily Welch, Bull & Prairie, Fool & the World and Faux in Love. The door opens at 6, music starts at 7. The nominal cover charge is $10, but no one is turned away for lack of funds.

On Thursday night, Dec. 19, the museum hosts a screening of “Helvetica,” a film about modern typefaces. The event starts at 7 and includes a talk from Ford. It’s the first installment of a documentary film club started by the Upper Valley Food Co-op.

And Friday night from 5 to 10, Ford will preside at the museum’s player piano for a night of — what else? — Christmas songs.

For more info, go to mainstreetmuseum.org or look up the museum on Facebook.

Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.