‘I have never been more excited about the potential for positive impact on the community, region and nation.’
— Lee Morris, chair of APM’s Board of Trustees
By Lauren Dorsey, Staff Writer
WINDSOR — The American Precision Museum (APM) in Windsor recently announced its plan to transform its second-floor collections storage into new spaces for offices, education, and the public over the next five years.
The museum has secured a $500,000, 4:1 matching grant from the Community Recovery and Revitalization Program (CRRP) for the renovations. It expects a new exhibit master plan, developed by the Roto Group, to be completed before the spring.
The museum is working with architects to determine the project’s structural constraints and their responsibilities for historic preservation. “We need [room] for different workshop spaces, maker spaces and learning spaces, but we also want to honor and celebrate the history of the building itself,” said Greg DeFrancis, the museum’s co-executive director, in an interview with the Standard. The building, constructed in 1846 as the Robbins & Lawrence Armory, is a National Historic Landmark.
The museum’s current exhibit space. Plans to expand are in the works.
According to DeFrancis, the multi-million dollar renovations — which will add 3,800 square feet of offices, classrooms, and exhibition space — are expected to begin in 2025 and must be completed by the end of 2026 to take advantage of the CRRP grant.
DeFrancis says that today, roughly 80% of the building’s second floor serves as collections storage while the staff use the remainder as offices. As part of this project, the museum has developed a collection management plan to help them determine the future of the objects currently stored on their second floor. They will move some pieces to the building’s third floor, which also serves as storage, relocate others off-site, and deaccession the remainder.
“A lot of brain work has to take place for each object. It’s not just pick up and throw out,” said Steve Dalessio, the museum’s other co-executive director. “[We want objects that] meet the mission of the museum. And certainly, we want to keep anything that’s associated with this building.”
APM’s goals for the expansion center around the museum’s new mission statement, which was revealed at an October 11 event where supporters of the renovations celebrated the launch of the museum’s new five-year plan. According to a release, that statement is: “We engage audiences in the stories of human ingenuity through the lens of manufacturing — learning from yesterday, exploring today, and imagining tomorrow.”
In order to bring that new mission statement to life, APM hopes the renovations and new exhibit master plan will allow the museum to present a more deliberate story of the past and attract a broader demographic. “We can’t be just a collection of old objects anymore. [Roto] is going to help us design exhibits that connect each object to a larger story,” said Dalessio.
DeFrancis says they hope to draw a clear line from each breakthrough in machining to the present, making the history of manufacturing more accessible to everyone. “We want to expand who even thinks they would be interested in visiting the museum. Right now, we have machine enthusiasts, people from the industry, and historic preservationists,” said DeFrancis. “We need to present our work to make sure that everyone, no matter what their background or experience is, would find something interesting and relevant to them.”
The museum also hopes to use the new space to strengthen its educational programming or the ways it “explores today.” APM does a variety of student outreach activities, including field trips, hosting quarterly events for students, and distributing free STEM+M (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, and Manufacturing) kits to local fourth- through sixth-grade classrooms.
After the expansion, APM hopes to increase the museum’s collaborations with local educators and add to the programming they offer for students and their families outside of the school day. “[The expansion] will be significantly transformative,” Molly Holleran, the museum’s education specialist, said to the Standard. “It will give us a dedicated education space [where we] can have more robust and in-depth programming that doesn’t have to be cleaned up the same way that it does if we’re doing it in our lobby.”
Paul Dana, technical lead at the museum, demonstrates a 3D printer in the museum’s Innovation Station.
Looking forward, APM anticipates that the renovations and new exhibit design will help them inspire a new generation of manufacturers. The increased space will allow them to introduce the career to a broader array of people, dispel common myths, and provide more opportunities for students to engage with the industry.
“We want to help people recognize that there’s a place for them in manufacturing today, no matter what they look like or what zip code they were born in. Right now, people assume that it’s not a good career path, which is very wrong,” said DeFrancis. “Across the country, there is a need for a workforce. We are only able to fill that if people from all walks of life see there’s a place for them.”
This effort may manifest following the renovation through more intensive summer camps. “We may run camps with more coding practice built into them, so students could learn how to program the robots we have or use our 3D printers, building skills that they can actually take with them into a tech program,” said Holleran.
At last week’s launch celebration, Lee Morris, the chair of APM’s Board of Trustees, underscored the significance of the planned project. “[While] I am incredibly proud of this museum and how much it has accomplished over the years,” said Morris, “I have never been more excited about the potential for positive impact on the community, region and nation.”