The State Museum in Albany has an old-school charm and now Assemblywoman Pat Fahy, D-Albany, has introduced two bills designed to push it into the future.
ALBANY — The New York State Museum was closed for 14 months during the COVID-19 pandemic, a level of caution that, in retrospect, looks rather extreme.
During that extended shutdown, Assemblywoman Pat Fahy received just one complaint about the museum’s inaccessibility. That apparent lack of interest, she told me during a recent conversation, was more evidence that the Albany museum had lost its way and become irrelevant or forgotten to much of the public.
“I’ve always felt that the State Museum was tired and dated but that it should be a showcase,” Fahy said. “New York City is the cultural capital of the world. Why, just two hours to the north, do we have a museum that’s so dated and disappointing?”
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Regular readers of this column will know that Fahy and I fully agree on that point. The museum at the southern end of Empire State Plaza has experienced a decades-long deterioration as ambitious renovation plans fall by the wayside or are pushed just over the horizon. The result is a museum that looks much as it did when its current building opened nearly 50 years ago.
That’s not all bad. The museum has an old-school charm, at least for the families still bothering to visit, as mine certainly does. But clearly, the State Museum isn’t what it could or should be.
Fahy has a plan to fix that. The Democrat from Albany has introduced two bills this legislative session designed to push the State Museum into the future.
The first, acknowledging that the museum’s problems are tied to consistent underfunding, would increase from $15 to $25 the recording fee collected by county clerks for the state’s cultural education account. The fee hasn’t changed since established in 2002, even though the cost of almost everything else has risen.
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The second bill, tacitly acknowledging that the museum has suffered from a lack of attention, would establish a New York State Museum Partnership Trust — a board that would include private citizens and be appointed by the governor, the state Board of Regents, and leadership in the Legislature. The trust would look after the museum by raising money, providing advice on displays, generating new ideas and more.
The idea, Fahy said diplomatically, noting sensitivity to her bill within state government, isn’t for the trust to replace the Department of Education’s oversight of the museum. Instead, the trust would aid and complement the department’s efforts.
The Education Department said in a prepared statement that it’s reviewing Fahy’s legislation and does not comment on pending legislation but noted that “the Board of Regents has advocated for adjustments to the funding structure for the Office of Cultural Education — which includes the State Museum, Library and Archives — in their Budget and Legislative Priorities.”
Whether either of the bills has a snowball’s chance in you-know-where, I don’t know. But Fahy said she’s reasonably optimistic the fee increase will pass. The second bill, she noted, at least seems to have grabbed the attention of state officials.
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In fact, Fahy said Education Commissioner Betty Rosa is enthusiastic about remaking the museum and is even weighing adding a children’s science museum to its offerings, which already include kid-friendly attractions such as the fourth-floor carousel and Discovery Place.
To be clear, that museum would not be Schenectady’s Museum of Innovation and Science, which is desperately seeking a new home. With state officials apparently unwilling to pull miSci from Schenectady to Albany, the new offerings at the State Museum would be, well, entirely new.
That sounds good to Fahy, who has been pushing for a children’s museum in downtown Albany since 2017 and has long expressed concern at the drain of family-friendly attractions away from the children who most need them.
“More and more, the region’s attractions are outside of downtown Albany,” Fahy said. “First, you need a car, and then you need cash. But not everybody has a car and cash.”
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The problem is not merely cultural or educational. It’s also about economic development.
Many billions in state and federal dollars have been used to attract and support tech firms, with GlobalFoundries being the most prominent example. But little attention has been given to investing in quality-of-life improvements that the workers attracted by those firms would want from the region where they’ll raise their families.
Fahy noted that out-of-town lawmakers, and others, often ask what there is to do in Albany with children. I sometimes get the same question. It can be difficult to answer with anything more than a shrug of the shoulders, particularly during winter months.
“You’ve got to revitalize the core,” Fahy said. “I want a downtown children’s museum in Albany. I’ve always wanted that, and we’ll get that sooner or later.”
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I hope she’s right and suspect she is. But how long must we wait?
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