The Jacksonville Area Museum is coming up on its one year anniversary later this month.
Museum Board Chair David Blanchette credits the success of the museum to generous visitors and donors. Blanchette says it’s hard to believe that one year has gone by so quickly: “It just seems like yesterday that we opened the museum to the public. It’s been a very successful year for us, and we just wanted to mark that occasion with a very simple event on Sunday, September 25th.”
More than 1,500 visitors have toured the Jacksonville Area Museum during its first year of operation. Several important artifact donations (including most recently for the Capps Factory exhibit) have occurred during the institution’s first year of operation, a museum manager was hired to oversee the museum’s day-to-day operations, and the Jacksonville Area Museum Foundation was formed to raise money to expand and improve the museum.
Blanchette says the Open House anniversary celebration on September 25th will feature a look back on the metamorphosis of the Old Post Office Building into the museum: “On [Sunday, September 25th] from 1-4PM, which is the normal operating hours for a Sunday, we’re just going to welcome the public to come in. We are going to have pictures on display that show the Old Post Office building before we transformed it into a museum. People that have been to the museum may not remember or even realize what the place looked like before we transformed it. We want to show how it changed from the condition that we got it in to the condition that is in now. Also, we will have some refreshments for folks on our back patio. Hopefully the weather will be nice so people can enjoy that, as well.”
Blanchette says that the Museum is now looking forward to the second phase of expansion. He says with the newly formed Jacksonville Area Museum Foundation, the fundraising arm of the museum, there will be an announcement coming soon on a fundraising opportunity to get Phase 2 expansion completed.