Photo by Joanne Beck
There’s an awful lot of new happening at the Holland Land Office Museum, a site meant to capture moments of historical weightiness.
A full-time curator; exhibits about the last complete solar eclipse in Genesee County, a vintage wedding dress collection and the 100-year anniversary of Batavia Concert Band; a monthly walk-up tour of the West Main Street site’s second-floor collections; a revised membership; and planning for a three-phase capital project are just some of the new items glossing up the old status quo, Museum Director Ryan Duffy says.
He brought new hire Tyler Angora to Monday’s Human Services meeting to introduce him as part of the novel happenings at Holland Land Office.
“Some time ago, there was a curator position. But that was before the museum. That was a completely different museum basically at that time, but Tyler is the first in a very long time … because we really wanted to take advantage of our wonderful collection. And we needed somebody with expertise in that particular field and who had some creative ideas in order to bring it out to the public,” Duffy said. “More so than anything I could do or volunteers, so we felt it was a major need. And it's already paid off dividends in terms of bringing our nearly 20,000-piece collection more to light.”
Angora, who lives in Brockport, is pursuing his master’s in history at Brockport State College. He began his role as curator in June, though he wears many hats, he said, as curator, collections manager, tour giver, and for jobs that entail “a bunch of different things.”
“But I'm solely in charge of the collection, I manage it, I take care of it, I present it to the public, I have to interpret it in a way for everyone to see it and enjoy it as much as we do. Since I've been there in June, I've really taken hold of that collections management. I have reorganized and redesigned the collection storage upstairs with Ryan to make it more accessible, to not only us to display but also accessible to the public,” Angora said. “That coincides with doing grander exhibits, like next year, we're reimagining the entire original structure of the building to really display the land office artifacts that we hold in our museum, but also the artifacts for our temporary exhibits like ’98 Years Since the Sun Went Out,’ which is the eclipse exhibit. So it'll be really exciting to break down pieces that haven't been on display for decades.
“I really focused on the fashion collection that we hold at the museum, which has been kept upstairs in a room by itself for a very long time. So we're really excited to start bringing that down and showing that off to the public because it's a really fantastic collection that spans over 300 years of clothing and physical history,” he said. “That is amazing. And we're hoping to do kind of behind-the-scenes stories next year to bring people upstairs into the collection. So it's been a big part of trying to make it accessible to the public. Because that's our goal.”
Going upstairs, that’s interesting. When will that begin?
“So next year, about February is when the public will finally officially be able to go up into the collection on special tours with Ryan and I. On the first Friday of every month, they'll get a special tour upstairs and a special presentation from one of us,” Angora said. “And it's going to be really exciting to finally show off pieces that probably won't ever really be on display due to their fragility or their important significance to us. So that would be fun to show off to the public, especially next year when we reopen the museum in February and kind of redesign a lot of the spaces.”
What’s behind your passion in pursuing a master’s in history?
He began at Brockport College as a business major in 2020 and didn’t really know what he wanted to do. He then met some key people in the History Department who got him involved with the Morgan House — “which I consider my home; it’s a museum that really holds a good place in my heart,” he said.
“And that's where it started, my love for museums, preservation objects, artifacts, all of that. And it transcended into me pursuing this kind of career path in museums. And I continued that into the GCM at the Genesee Country Village Museum with Brandon Brooks, the curator, where I worked with him with the Susan Green costume collection and really helped do stuff there. And I really got involved with preservation doing my own research,” Angora said. “So having this job and having Ryan as a co-worker is a lot of fun because he lets me just do whatever I want and kind of helps assist the collection in surviving for another over 100 years. So it'll be a lot of fun.”
Some recent history
More than 5,000 people visited the museum since July 2022, and 65 percent of them were from outside of Genesee County. Visitors have come from more than 30 states and several foreign countries, including Canada, Indonesia, China and the Netherlands, Duffy said in his annual report to the county.
The museum hosted its 21st annual Wonderland of Trees in 2022 and 400 visitors during the season, plus a Genesee Symphony Orchestra opening night concert and three more for 50-plus attendees. The site served to educate and entertain with a guest speaker series on topics that varied from The Life of Joseph Ellicott and The Prison Guard’s Daughter to WNY in the Gilded Age to How Buffalo Got Its Name.
Volunteers, docents and interns completed more than 1,700 hours of community service, with a steadfast core of 25 volunteers.
The Museum’s board signed a lease with Genesee County to show occupancy and allow the pursuit of further grants. Duffy and Angora have each been writing grants, Duffy said.
“And between Tyler and I we can also apply for more grants on our own, as we each got two since this year, as well as the support from our grant writer Sara Pasti, who is looking at larger grants for the capital project,” he said. “And we're looking at smaller program and collections-based grants. But those, we can get a couple of those every year. They add up and allow us to do greater things.”
A first-phase capital project has begun with the development of plans for a new proposed West Wing addition adjacent to the parking lot. Included with that was the creation of fundraising and grant opportunities — to be written by Duffy, Angora and a county-hired grant writer — to assist in covering the large cost. That is to be a three- to five-year project, Duffy said.
The county had contracted with grant writer Sara Pasti to gain access to grants relating to the capital project of the West Wing entrance, as well as for other improvements to the museum outside the capabilities of museum staff.
Legislative Chair Shelley Stein asked Duffy if the “grant-writing support provided by the county” has been used to write the intended grant yet, and “we’re working on several grants, actually, towards this,” he said.
Overall, what can the public look forward to in the coming months?
This go-round of a speaker series is to feature Civil War Letters of Rollin Truesdell, Grant’s Last Battle and Journeys to Authors’ Graves in Upstate New York, to name a few, plus history trivia and a membership that isn’t reliant on calendar year renewal. And that’s not even reviewing the collections, which Duffy and Angora are confident the public will enjoy.
“It won’t be the same old way, and it won’t be the same old museum. So if you haven’t been there in some time, you won’t recognize the place,” Duffy said.
“Even in the four months I've been there, it’s changed drastically,” Angora agreed. “We've redesigned exhibits that have been up for several years. Redone, permanent exhibits. We've added new items for the public to see. So just expect more indoor exhibits, new programs and more fundraising. We're really going to be everywhere next year, so we will be kind of a force to be reckoned with.”
