Over at the Loudoun Museum in downtown Leesburg, the smell of change and paint is in the air as the museum prepares to unveil a whole new look in April.
What originally started as a project to present a new year-long exhibit and refurbish some of the 200-year-old building's creakier elements has turned into something else altogether.
"From the front all the way to the back is being completely overhauled," said Eric Larson, Loudoun Museum curator, as he stood in the museum's now-bare front room.
With the help of staff, Larson has created an ambitious three-year exhibit plan that is the largest in scope that the museum has ever undertaken. The series, "Centuries of Change," will follow Loudoun's development as an exemplar of American history as a whole.
As the staff considered what to do to improve the museum's small space, they came to the realization that four big anniversaries are coming up in the next three years: the 250th anniversary of Gen. Braddock's March this year, the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001 next year and the 250th anniversary of Loudoun's founding and the 400th anniversary of the landing at Jamestown in 2007.
"That's when we started to think, why don't we do something that's three years long?" said executive director Karen MacLeod.
WITH THE help of local branding company Mann Marketing, the museum will also have a specific look. No longer a hodgepodge of logos and colors, the Loudoun Museum's look will be more sophisticated and, with time, recognizable.
"All the design is the same, it's branded," Larson said.
That goes all the way from invitations to the invite-only unveiling on April 8 to the script on the new panels that will adorn the museum's walls. Larson and MacLeod wrote and edited the material, which has a spark the old material lacked.
For example, each panel will start with a quote from a Loudoun resident or someone who has something particularly good to say. The panel introducing the county's namesake, Lord Loudoun, starts off with a quote from Ben Franklin proclaiming of Lord Loudoun, "Indecision was one of his Strongest Features."
The life-size, cartoonish cardboard cutout of Lord Loudoun that used to greet visitors will meet an equally cartoonish fate: its head will be lopped off so visitors can pose behind the 18th century lord's body.
THAT'S BECAUSE one of the main ideas behind the overhaul is an attempt to reach out to Loudoun's fastest-growing population: young families.
On April 9, the museum will hold its first-ever Family Fun Day in what will become a quarterly event. This one will be called "From Mobcaps to Moccasins" and be a free, all-day open house for children to learn about Braddock's March and the French and Indian War in a variety of interactive ways.
Market research has shown that museums need to entertain, Larson said.
"You have to make the museum not only educational, but they have to be fun for the family," he said.
The fun day will dovetail with a symposium for adults on April 2, also on the French and Indian War. The symposium will feature two academics and two local citizens with Indian heritage.
"I think it's a good opportunity for local citizens to hear about a local community they don't necessarily hear about," said education director Janis Golden.
FOR THE MUSEUM'S staff, the overhaul is an opportunity to remake the museum in a new image. Most of the small staff has been working there for less than a year, and the three-year project, which most museums don't even attempt, was conceived in a matter of months.
The board of directors has had an active role in the $28,000 refurbishing as well — one has donated his carpentry skills, and the architect wife of another has helped guide the restoration of the museum's historic building at 16 Loudoun St.
It's all meant to help people understand the context of the place they live in. With real voices from the past in the guise of diaries, artifacts and more, the history presented at the Loudoun Museum will show the county's evolution — but it'll also show that people are people no matter what the century.
"It's centuries of change, but things stay the same too," MacLeod said.