New curator at Pasto Ag Museum

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – A new volunteer curator has been named for Penn State’s Pasto Agricultural Museum
Daryl Heasley of State College, retired professor emeritus of rural sociology, will take the reins of the museum at year’s end.
He replaces Darwin Braund, a retired professor of dairy science, who has been the volunteer coordinator for the past decade.
Heasley will be the third volunteer curator of the facility, located 9 miles southwest of State College on Pa. Route 45 at the Russell E. Larson Agricultural Research Center at Rock Springs.
Renovations. The museum will undergo a renovation in 2008 that will add 5,200 square feet of floor space to the existing 40-by-80 foot museum.
The project will include extensive renovations to the existing structure, allowing it to be heated and air-conditioned and to better display the agricultural antiques in the collection.
In addition, the museum will be available year around once the building is completed.
When it is finished, there will be enough room to put almost all of the museum’s holdings on display. Right now, only about 40 percent of the collection can be exhibited.
The renovations won’t be done by Penn State’s Ag Progress Days in August as planned, which is the 30th anniversary of the museum.
Reputation. The Pasto Agricultural Museum, which is known for having one of the nation’s finest collections of dairy antiques, has more than 1,000 rare and unusual pieces used for farming and homemaking in the era before electricity and gasoline power.
The focus is on Pennsylvania and the Northeast from the 1800s to the early 1940s, with links to modern agricultural methods.
For information about group tours, call 814-865-2541 or e-mail pastoagmuseum@psu.edu.