#AskACurator Day and Other Announcements

Just a short post today with a couple of announcements:

#AskACurator Day

Landis Valley curator Bruce Bomberger will be on-hand from 1:30 to 2:15 p.m. on September 14 to answer your questions about the collection, curating, agricultural technology, and the Landis Brothers, founders of Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum.  Send us your questions and we'll post them on Twitter and Facebook.  No personal questions, please, and no requests for appraisals.

To see our Twitter feed, you can either follow us on Twitter or you can visit our Media page, where we have a Twitter feed embeded.

In other news...

Wool Frolic

On September 17, Landis Valley will host the Wool Frolic & Yarn Sale event.  In this celebration of the fiber arts, you'll get to pet live animals, see a sheep being shorn, and then get to watch wool get spun, woven and needle-felted.  Staff and volunteers will there to teach you the basics of crochet and knitting, or you can stroll around and purchase fiber arts products from one of our vendors. If you're inspired, visit the yarn sale, where we have sorted yarns of all kinds and pattern books for that next project.  It's a great day of fuzzy fun for the family!

Harvest Days

It's an event about Pennsylvania German harvest traditions, but, after 56 years of existence, it's become a tradition itself.  Families come from all over to taste heritage varieties of apples and see them turned into pies, cider, apple butter, and even molasses.  There's wagon rides, too, as well as a pumpkin patch, food vendors, interactive exhibits, a children's discovery tent, and demonstrations of crafts, trades, and machinery.  We also will welcome the Horseless Carriage Club of America when they bring roughly 30 turn-of-the-century vehicles to the Millstone Grove from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Regular admission rates apply to both of these events and, as always, Landis Valley Associates members are free.

The Museum Store Upgrade

Guest blog entry by Museum Store manager Terry Kreider

New displays are being created at the Landis Valley Museum Store

January and February are traditionally slow months in the store and we are taking advantage of the reduced traffic to do a major over haul of the first floor.  The main reasons for the changes are to make space on the first floor for all our handcrafted merchandise currently displayed on the second floor (assuring our best merchandise is accessible to all our visitors) and to improve the Museum Book Store sales area.

The museum store's new book nook

First project was to move the register counter toward the front door by 4 feet.  This also required moving the electric and running computer wires under the floor.  This small shift made the back corner open to our customers; previously they had to ask permission to see items displayed behind the register.

The most involved job is the Museum Book Store.  More display shelves are being added and book cases being rearranged to create an open area with more light.  We moved the stage from the middle of the store to the back corner of the book area to create a place to spotlight our children’s books as well as space for book signings and presentations. 

Several displays are being transported from the second floor to the first.  Blacksmith Mike Reinard, who built the blacksmith display, is relocating it from the back corner of the second floor.  Framed artwork display pallets will also be moved. 

Blacksmith-created pieces front and center

I am thankful to carpenter Mike Wagner and Kyle Hake from our maintenance staff.  They took my ideas and made them work.  Thank you to the winter store staff, Kenney Brunning and Liz Miller, who with volunteers Brad Potts and Lin Forney have contributed ideas, constructive feedback and hard work! We have been having fun trying to figure out what displays will work where.  There’s been a lot of trial and error!  A final thank you goes to Site Administrator Jim Lewers for green lighting the project and providing feedback and support.

The most enjoyable part of all this for me is communicating with many local artists and working to bring our customers the highest quality handmade items to fill the Museum Store when the renovations are done!

The goal is to have everything completed and stocked for Charter Day (Sunday, March 13).  Feel free to stop in, watch our progress, and shop from all the new merchandise we are getting in on a daily basis!