What will the Pa. Military Museum look like when it reopens? Here’s a sneak peek
The Pennsylvania Military Museum in Boalsburg is supposed to be barely recognizable when it reopens next year after a multi-million-dollar renovation — and museum officials recently pulled back the curtain on just what it’s expected to look like.
A large, open space will be replaced by walls and partitions to better separate galleries. About half of the more than 1,000 artifacts on display will be completely different from before. Exhibits will be professionally designed and constructed, and history buffs intent on reading everything will find they’re able to spend more than three hours exploring the building — compared to an hour or so during past visits.
“It’s going to be a pretty astronomical amount of information,” museum director Chris Kuhns told the CDT. “We kind of set it up so that if you walk in and see a cool uniform but you’re not interested, you can just read the title ... and carry on. Or you can sit there and actually read through who he was and see his picture.
“That’s kind of how all our exhibit labels are designed, where you get the SparkNotes version from the title of the exhibit label. And then you actually get the meat of the exhibit if you keep reading on.”
Kuhns recently sat down with the CDT and showed a stack of internal plans, concepts and designs that offer the most complete preview yet of the state-owned museum. Much of the information was previously available for public inspection, but it was not widely disseminated due partly to the prohibitively large file sizes.
Here’s a closer look at some of the most telling and eye-catching plans and renderings, many of which could still change as fabrication of the exhibits is expected to begin over the summer. Most plans here can trace their roots back to 2018 when the capital improvement plan really got underway.
‘One of the most important exhibits’
The museum will feature the entire history of the U.S. military, with each gallery focusing on a different era from a Pennsylvania perspective — from how the military was first established in the commonwealth to the Civil War and through modern conflicts.
One of the most-popular galleries will undoubtedly be the one focused on World War I, a rendering of which is pictured below. And housed in that gallery will be what Kuhns termed “one of the most important exhibits” in the museum, referring to the six-ton M1917 light tank that carries a lot of historical significance.
.jpeg "IMG_0655 (1).jpeg")
The M1917 tank was the first tank built by the U.S., and it largely copied France’s FT-17 Renault. There’s also only a handful of surviving M1917 tanks in the world, and the local museum has maybe the rarest of them all — the only remaining M1917 tank originally fitted with the Marlin 1918 tank machine gun. Multiple papers have been written on this specific piece at the museum, including the 2017 issue of Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies.
“This is probably, to me, going to be one of the most important exhibits,” Kuhns added, explaining more than 100,000 Americans lost their lives despite the nation’s 19-month involvement. “Not only do we have a one-of-a-kind tank, but it’s talking about subject matter in American history that no one talks about. And, personally, I think it’s one of the biggest linchpins in American military history — just for what we accomplished, how we accomplished it and how we overcame astronomically huge adversity to end the war.”
Museum setup/blueprints
Like before, the museum will largely take visitors on a chronological journey through both the state’s and country’s military history. And, while walls and partitions will now better separate the galleries, the layout will remain similar to before.
The gift shop, public restrooms and theater will remain positioned near the main entrance. And a small section will recount the history of Theodore Boal, the 19th-century Army officer and architect who owned and expanded nearby Boal Mansion.
Once visitors make it past that section, the tour really begins.
Keeping it personal
One of the additions that Kuhns most touted was the alcove shortly after entering, which will feature different individual stories from locals and other fellow Pennsylvanians.
Kuhns envisions oral history videos and interviews on four screens, spliced together with photos, with individuals sharing what they did, why they did it, what they’re proud of and what they wish was different.
This area was close to Kuhns’ heart because one of his overall goals with this renovation isn’t just to focus on events or battles — but to really focus on the people. Kuhns isn’t just looking to display an old uniform while calling it a day; he wants to explain who wore the uniform, why they wore it and what they did in it.
And this area, labeled “1.9 Individual Stories” in the plans below, really helps further that aim.
Ideally, there will be touchscreens that allow visitors to cycle through numerous Pennsylvanians’ stories. But Kuhns acknowledged those can be expensive and, if the military museum is in danger of going over budget, those screens would likely be among the first to go. But the section itself will still be featured prominently, whether the screens can feature four stories that need to be changed manually or 40 that can be cycled through automatically with touchscreens.
“It’s a way to personalize the museum a little more to include more of the individual stories of the Pennsylvanians who, again, we can’t include in the permanent exhibit — but their stories still need to be told,” Kuhns said.
Gallery/exhibit designs
There will be 24 exhibits in all. And, while casual visitors will still be able to complete the museum in about an hour, those who want to soak in everything will find there’ll be about the equivalent of 250 pages of material to read throughout the museum.
The new World War II gallery, for example, will help better set the tone by featuring a background of a bombed-out Europe. “And then you can read the actual information panels, and that’s where it gets a lot more in-depth than what they used to have in the exhibit,” Kuhns said. “You can actually read about a lot more of the personal stories.”
The renderings of the galleries, shown from different angles, provide the clearest preview of the museum. But other plans and blueprints — some of which use plans and ideas from other museums — also reveal the level of detail the Pennsylvania Military Museum is aspiring to.
Again, much of the material here still needs to be constructed. And as with any project, whether it’s Penn State’s Palmer Museum of Art or Centre County’s Whitehall Road Regional Park, changes and substitutions are bound to happen compared to the original designs.
But whatever company ends up constructing it all — which will likely be determined over the summer — they’ll be shown these same plans.
.jpeg "IMG_0669 (1).jpeg")
Timeline: What’s next?
This was supposed to be a 14-month project that cost $3.4 million and allowed the museum to reopen in February 2026. Instead, the military museum announced earlier this year the reopening would be delayed until 2027 due partly to a series of unanticipated issues and surprises that contractors faced during renovations.
Kuhns said he was not yet sure about the final cost of the project, or if it changed, but said that should become clearer in the near future.
In addition to all the interior changes and redesign, renovations mostly revolved around the installation of a new HVAC system, a geothermal system and a new vapor barrier for walls. That’s especially important in a museum because high humidity could ruin a lot of artifacts, basically causing wool WWII uniforms to fall part, for example.
The HVAC-related renovations should be completed by next month. The museum, which first opened in 1969, then has to wait 90 days to ensure the HVAC system is working properly and, after that, the museum can then allow fabrication of the exhibits to begin. (It still hasn’t hired someone for that but will soon go through a bidding process.)
That fabrication will take about nine months, and the museum will be able to reopen afterward.
In the meantime, museum officials are working out of trailers behind the museum, and they still have outdoor events planned throughout the year — from a May 17 remembrance ceremony for the oldest continuously serving unit in the U.S. Army (28th Infantry Division) to events scheduled through December.
