Museums came from all over to share the love, at Museums Amore, the 32nd Annual Small Museum Association conference held in Ocean City, MD this February.

Arden Craft Shop Museum and Archives committee members Sadie Somerville and Barbara Macklem and our curator, Kelsey Ransick, attended the small museum conference along with more than 250 other museum professionals, board members, and volunteers from a wide variety of small museums. 

Kelsey was a presenter for one of this year's sessions based on her newly published book Free and Easy Website Design for Museums and Historic Sites.

Barbara and Sadie attended numerous sessions on topics from building your own museum displays to grant writing workshop and collaborating with other small museums. It was inspiring and exciting to meet other small museum folks who have so many great ideas to share with us. We have plans for new programs to be held at the ACSM!

For the past months you may have seen a number of workers and contractors busy at the Museum.  All this effort has produced a new roof and new gutters for the Craft Shop. Fortunately, this was accomplished before the big snow and the building is now much more secure.  Additional improvements are planned for this spring and early summer.

The first will be the installation of interior storm windows in the Museum galleries, storage and office space, and the Bernie Schwab Community Room.  These windows will not impact the historical structure and will improve the temperature and humidity control in the building.

To complete this project we will need to move a large number of items in the gallery and storage areas so the contractors have space to work.  This move is planned to start on Sunday, March 20th and the contractors will arrive on Wednesday, March 23rd.  The Museum will be closed on those days, as well as Easter Sunday, March 27th.

On Wednesday, March 30th, we will be able to begin to return things to their proper place and so we will need to be closed that day as well.  While we are closed we will still be available by telephone and email and hope this does not cause a great inconvenience to our visitors.  The new storm windows will be a great improvement and we are looking forward to our renovated space.

Please check our website for updates and photos – and be sure to come to see our new space!