GOLDENDALE, Wash. — The big winds that rake this nearly treeless channel of the Columbia River Gorge lightened somewhat last weekend.

“It was calmer than usual,” said Colleen Schafroth, the executive director of the Maryhill Museum of Art, high on a bluff above the Columbia. “But the turbines were definitely turning.” And after last weekend, when Maryhill celebrated the opening of a $10 million addition, when benefactors strolled the new plaza that offers views of the river, Mount Hood and the wheat fields across the river in Oregon, and when guests dined outside the little cafe, everyone will know better than to complain when the wind picks up again.

After all, in addition to a sculpture garden featuring artists of the Pacific Northwest, Maryhill’s grounds — all 5,300 acres of them — now include 15 wind turbines, part of a vast installation that sends 500 megawatts of electricity to Los Angeles and about $250,000 each year into the operating revenues of one of the most isolated art museums in the contiguous United States.

Maryhill raised the money for the addition through public and private grants — no small feat given its size and location and the challenges facing arts institutions — but museum officials say revenue from leasing its land for wind energy provided the confidence and financial security to proceed with the capital campaign at a time when the number of visitors, about 45,000 a year, is well below its peak in the 1990s.