Milford Museum introduced their new executive director and requested additional assistance from the city for their new building. The museum recently renovated and moved into the former police station at 400 Southeast Front Street.
“I have been involved with the museum for 15 years as the director after working 34 years as a collections manager for the state,” Claudia Leister, Collections Manager for the museum said. “I grew up in Milford and I love it. All this came about four years ago when I teased Mark Whitfield, saying “you know, we have run out of space over there and we had gotten a million dollars from the state to add on a meeting room.” I told him “How about we move into City Hall.” He laughed and said “no, but how about the old police station.” We looked at it and were excited for the possibilities.”
Leister explained that the funds from the state were reallocated from an addition on their current building to renovations on the police station. She pointed out that they had no idea what it would cost to get the building to the level it needed to be, so they decided to do it in phases. The main exhibit area will open first and the Chamber of Commerce will also be housed there to create a Welcome Center.
“What we have realized is our agreement with the city, there need to be some changes, there are things we didn’t think of,” Leister said. “My understanding with Mark was we were responsible for the building and everything inside, but because it was a city building, the city would take care of the parking lot and lands around it But that was not specifically written into the agreement, so that is where we need to come to council and say we could use a little more financial support for things like the yellow striping, the parking lot and other items.”
Leister then introduced Larry Josefowski who was recently hired as the museum’s Executive Director.
“I bring 30 years of volunteer and nonprofit work of various sizes reflecting a lot of cultural, historical, civic and veteran groups,” Josefowski said. “I’ve always enjoyed history. I’ve done a lot of first-person re-enactments. I’ve done lectures and organized events, sort of like we just did this weekend. Tom Summers is still around. He is probably going to continue doing the Saturday programs until next July. Linda White is our operations manager.”
Josefowski stated that the mission of the museum is to increase knowledge and appreciation of Milford history and a lot of the things they have done recently reflect that.
“We had over 250 people attend Hippiefest, which is sort of our fun fundraisers,” Josefowski said. “We had no issues. We had great support from the police and EMTs. We also followed that up with the “Colored Balcony,” which is a movie we just funded in part with Delaware 250. We had a great partnership with Reverend Shockley and it was well attended. We had people not just from Milford, but from all over the state.”
According to Josefowski, there are between 100 and 125 people attending each of the Saturday programs at the library, up from the 30 or so who were attending in the beginning.
“We actually got to move into the building last week as we obtained our conditional use,” Josefowski said. “We are getting the exhibits set up in a phased approach.”
Currently, to complete the first phase of the building, the museum needs between $30,000 and $35,000, but they are seeking grant funding for some of those costs. Josefwski explained that the basement area was farther in the future as it needed significant repairs and improvements. A photo scavenger hunt is planned where people will have historical postcards, pictures, historical photograph and they try to match the photo to what it looks like today. The research area should be open soon so that those who need to research Milford history can do so easily.
“We are planning a grand opening in the future once we have everything in place,” Josefowski said. “We have some prints of Armistice Day in 1918 that we are selling in our gift shop. The first one will be donated to the VFW in September. We are also planning a winter house tour in early January.”
Josefowski stated that they were seeking small and large grants for building needs, such as a $4,000 grant for an exhibit room. He felt that a small grant like that was more attainable than a $100,000 grant for an elevator.
“Another thing we are focused on is our metrics,” Josefowski said. “Right now, our metrics are varied and we need to develop as well as refine them with staff and the board. We want to know how to improve for the future. There’s lots of things we need to work on, like museum and board policies. There are some things you may not think about like pest control policies.”
Because the new building will also be a Welcome Center, Josefowski stated that the museum needed more volunteers so the building could be open more days and hours. The museum is also looking into interns.
“I think it would be helpful to us and to all of council to maybe meet because we met with Chris and he is new to Milford, we enjoy working with him,” Leister said. “But we need to firm up who is responsible for what, and when Mark and I worked on the original agreement, everything that we could of thought of just wasn’t included. I think it is the type of thing we are asking is to clarify who is responsible for what. You own the building and we want to be good stewards of it. We have put a lot of time and money into it and we are hoping to get some help with completing the rest of the building.”
