UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - A new volunteer curator has been named who will help guide Penn State's Pasto Agricultural Museum through a building project to double exhibit space in the next year.

Daryl Heasley of State College, professor emeritus of rural sociology who recently retired after almost 37 years of service to the university's College of Agricultural Sciences, 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 nine miles southwest of State College on Pa. Route 45 at the Russell E. Larson Agricultural Research Center at Rock Springs. The first curator was Jerome Pasto, associate dean emeritus in the College of Agricultural Sciences, who stepped down as curator after 20 years in 1998. "I see myself as a caretaker continuing what Jerry Pasto started and Darwin Braund expanded," says Heasley, who has been a volunteer guide at the museum for several years. "Since I have great admiration for both previous curators, I just want to continue this role for a few years until we can hire somebody to do this at least part time."

Heasley, who grew up on a farm not far from Sandy Lake in Venango County, believes it is a quirk of fate that he ended up presiding over an agricultural museum. "Many of these antique implements we are displaying, I used way back when I was growing up on the farm," he says with a chuckle. "This is a good fit for me with my background and after teaching a vo-ag course at Slippery Rock Area High School for five years."

It is a challenge managing a museum with a part-time volunteer curator, Heasley points out, but the "common thread" running through the decades of the Pasto facility operation is museum office manager Vinnie Scanlon. "She's the glue that has held this together," he says. "We really appreciate what she does for the museum. I am going to be relying on her experience and perspective, as well as those same qualities from Pasto and Braund. It is because of the dedication and expertise of all the volunteers and donors that the museum functions."

The new addition to the museum will be 52 feet wide by 100 feet long and will add 5,200 square feet of floor space to the existing 40-foot 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 we will be able to put almost all of our holdings on display," says Heasley. "Right now, we are able to exhibit only about 40 percent of the collection. But it won't be done by Penn State's Ag Progress Days in August as planned, which is the 30th anniversary of the museum. We have encountered some delays in the project. But I think part of the building will be done by then, and we can have some sort of exhibit and ceremony."

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 send e-mail to pastoagmuseum@psu.edu.

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Jeff Mulhollem Writer/editor 814-863-2719 jjm29@psu.edu