Museum / Art Gallery

Collections in Action

Research at the EMS Museum & Art Gallery begins with objects—but it does not end there. Each specimen, artifact, and archival collection serves as an entry point into a broader process of inquiry, one that connects students, faculty, and collaborators across the University and beyond. In this way, the Museum functions not simply as a repository, but as a site of active knowledge production—where collections are transformed into questions, projects, and new understandings of the natural and cultural world.

For students, the Museum provides a rare and valuable opportunity to engage directly with primary materials. Across disciplines—from geosciences and materials science to history and anthropology—students use collections to develop research questions, test ideas, and communicate their findings to both academic and public audiences. Internships and independent projects highlight the depth of this engagement, with students contributing to exhibit development, collections research, and digitization efforts. These experiences extend classroom learning into applied practice, giving students the tools to work with complex datasets, interpret material evidence, and translate research into accessible formats.

Within the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, the Museum’s collections play a critical role in supporting faculty research and interdisciplinary collaboration. Specimens are used to investigate topics ranging from paleontology and environmental change to mineral resources and industrial history. Projects involving collections—whether reanalysis of legacy materials or the creation of new digital datasets—demonstrate how the Museum extends the reach of EMS research across time, linking historic collections to contemporary scientific questions.

At the same time, the Museum serves as a resource beyond Penn State, contributing expertise and technical knowledge to a broader network of institutions across the Commonwealth. Through professional service roles, research visits, collaborative projects, and collections-based consultation, Museum staff and affiliated researchers engage with peer institutions to share best practices in curation, analysis, and interpretation. These exchanges reinforce the Museum’s role as both a steward of collections and a partner in advancing museum and collections-based research statewide.

Equally important is the way research at the Museum bridges academic and public audiences. Many student and faculty projects culminate in exhibitions, public programs, or digital outputs, ensuring that research findings are not confined to scholarly spaces but shared more broadly. In this sense, the Museum operates as a translational space—where research is made visible, accessible, and relevant to diverse communities.

Collections: Infrastructure for Discovery

At the heart of the EMS Museum & Art Gallery is something that most visitors never fully see: the collections themselves. These are not static holdings or simply objects on shelves—they are dynamic, working resources that underpin nearly every aspect of the Museum’s role within the College, the University, and the broader community. In this way, museum collections function as a form of academic infrastructure: essential, enduring, and deeply integrated into teaching, research, and public engagement.

For the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, collections are a foundation for inquiry. They provide raw materials for understanding earth systems, industrial history, and material culture across scales—from microscopic thin sections to landscape-level geological units. Faculty and students alike draw on these resources to ask new questions of old specimens, whether that means revisiting historic mining materials in the context of critical mineral supply chains or reanalyzing paleontological collections to better understand environmental change in Pennsylvania and beyond. Collections allow EMS to extend its research mission across time, linking past investigations with emerging scientific priorities.

At the University level, the Museum’s collections contribute to Penn State’s identity as a land-grant institution. They are shared resources—accessible to collaborators across disciplines and increasingly to global audiences through digitization. Partnerships with departments such as Geosciences, Materials Science and Engineering, and Geography demonstrate how collections serve as common ground for interdisciplinary work. At the same time, they support experiential learning by giving students direct access to real objects, real data, and real research processes. In this sense, collections are classrooms, laboratories, and archives all at once.

Equally important is the role collections play in connecting the University to the public. Donations from alumni, local collectors, and community members continue to shape and expand the Museum’s holdings, reinforcing a shared sense of stewardship. These contributions—whether fossil assemblages, industrial artifacts, or teaching materials—reflect the values and histories of the communities the Museum serves. Once incorporated into the collections, they become part of a larger framework that ensures their preservation, interpretation, and accessibility for future generations.

This year’s work highlights an ongoing shift in how the Museum approaches collections—not just as objects to be maintained, but as assets to be actively developed. Initiatives such as re-curation, digitization, and large-scale inventory projects are strengthening the long-term stability and usability of the collections. At the same time, research requests, loans, and collaborative projects demonstrate their continued relevance to both scholarly and public audiences.

The EMS Museum & Art Gallery continued to serve as one of the College’s most visible and flexible points of connection to the university and central Pennsylvania communities—a place where Penn State students can practice science communication, where faculty can extend classroom learning, and where community audiences encounter earth and mineral sciences in ways that are immediate, hands-on, and welcoming. Education and outreach are often described in terms of numbers, but their larger significance lies in what they make possible. For the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, these activities help turn collections, exhibits, and expertise into public-facing experiences that reflect the depth of EMS research and teaching. For the University, they support Penn State’s land-grant mission by creating opportunities for outreach, experiential learning, and interdisciplinary collaboration. And for the community, they open the Museum as a place of access—one where schoolchildren, families, alumni, and visitors can explore stories of science, history, and environment through direct engagement with objects and ideas.

That work was especially visible in the Museum’s ongoing partnership with the Department of Geosciences and educators in the State College Area School District. For the second year in a row, fourth-grade students came to campus to explore fossils and earth history as part of their regular science curriculum, giving hundreds of children an early encounter with Penn State as a place of discovery. Just as important, the Museum continued to function as a laboratory for student growth. Interns and volunteers contributed research, exhibit development, collections work, and outreach support. Faculty also used the Museum as a teaching space, bringing classes into the gallery to think about science communication, public interpretation, and the role of collections in understanding the past and present. Taken together, these efforts illustrate how the Museum contributes well beyond its walls: it helps students learn by doing, strengthens connections between the College and the public, and reinforces the University’s role as a trusted cultural and educational resource in the region.

• More than 400 fourth-grade students from 26 State College Area School District classrooms visited the Museum in January, February, and March as part of the district’s science curriculum.

In FY2024–25, the EMS Museum & Art Gallery welcomed 4,850 visitors over 224 open days. Some visitors arrived as part of tours and programs, with 1,888 people taking part in these organized activities over the course of the year. Others came in more casually, as 2,962 walk-in visitors stopped by to explore the galleries on their own. This mix says a lot about the role the Museum gallery plays on campus: it is both a teaching space and a place where curiosity can take over. The Museum also offered 68 gallery programs this year helping to drive an increase of 904 visitors over the previous fiscal year. Average daily attendance rose from 20 to 22 visitors per day, a small shift on paper but one that reflects growing visibility, stronger partnerships, and a steady stream of people finding their way into the gallery.

Part of that momentum came from being present when campus energy was already high. By partnering with the Ryan Family Student Center and other groups to keep the gallery open during major College and University recruiting events, the Museum connected with visitors during some of the year’s busiest moments, including EMEX, the Central Pennsylvania Festival for the Arts, and PSU Family Weekend. The biannual Night at the Museums event added two evening openings that gave students, families, alumni, and community members another way to spend time in the space. 

At the same time, the Museum kept up an active exhibition schedule, installing nine exhibits that brought together students, faculty, and campus partners around a wide range of ideas. Some exhibitions looked closely at labor, environment, and industrial history, while others explored sustainability, science communication, and identity through objects, specimens, and works of art. Exhibits such as The Work of Art, which examined WPA prints and the visual culture of American labor during the Great Depression, and Pride Rocks, which used rocks, minerals, and fossils to tell stories connected to LGBTQ+ history and identity, showed just how flexible the Museum’s collections can be. Across the year, the gallery was a place where art, science, and history met in ways that were inviting and relevant. Its exhibits capture some of that range and give a fuller picture of how the Museum used its spaces this year—not just to display objects, but to spark conversation, collaboration, and new ways of seeing familiar stories.

Museum Staff

Chris Widga (Director) and Patti Wood Finkle (Curator)
 

Advisory Board 

Jonathan Mathews (chair), Alan Kimel, Tanya Furman, Marisa Ferger, Jenn Baka, James Doyle, James Guyton, Stacy Davidson, Linda Musser, Patricia Craig, Erin Hale, Chris Brida, Karen Pham, Julianne Snider
 

Research Associates 

Julianne Snider, John Simmons, Derek Jurestovsky, Michael Deak
 

Gallery Attendants

Braden Amspacher, Alex Czeczulin, Zoee Gray, Clark Cushing, Sophia Wood, Kurt Franz, Bera Abhinandan
 

Collections Assistants

Ava Yurchak, Emma Enos, Sophia Wood, AJ Brown, Mia DiSylvester, Madison Millin, Clark Cushing, Sarah Ambrozak, Gillian O'Niell, Aiden Gonzales, Hayden Horne, Olivia Tabler, Michael Moyer, Munrie Gezeroglu
 

Museum Interns

Clark Cushing, Juliana Hart, Katie Walzer, Sophia Alfieri, Rachel D’Angelo
 

Volunteers in Collections

Nick Gilchenok, Jaimie Madden, Alex Miller
 

Volunteers in Education and Outreach

Spring 4th graders: Logan Madden, Zach Baran, Kelly Bennett, Ava Yurchak, Nynaeve Phillipson
MANTLE: Ava Spangler, Logan Madden, Aiden, Ben Kilian, Zach Baran, Kelly Bennet,  
 

What is a museum? 

This is a question that visitors never ask. To most visitors, it seems self-evident. A museum is a building of exhibits in glass cases. Perhaps it is also an opportunity to engage in informal science education experiences. To those who have dipped a little deeper into the pool, the answer may be that a museum has a three-part mission of research, education, and exhibits. This certainly gets us closer to a kernel of truth, but it still seems over-simplistic for all of the activities that are undertaken under the umbrella of a museum over the course of a single year. Even this oft-quoted answer doesn’t really capture a museum’s role as a partner in long term stewardship of specimens, samples, art, instruments, and artifacts.

After two decades of service in a variety of museums of all shapes, sizes, and missions—I too sometimes struggle to put into words the generational impact of a museum to the community it serves. Recently, I’ve begun to think of museums, including the EMS Museum & Art Gallery as a ‘framework’ whose primary goal is to steward the “things” that a community holds most dear across multiple generations. This emphasizes the preservation and stewardship aspects of a museum. However, if we follow this train of thought we very quickly arrive at a museum’s role in serving a community. This role can be to craft exhibits that question, engage, and explain. Or it may be to provide resources for K-12 educators or training the next generation of scientists, engineers, scholars, and artists.

But is this where a museum’s impact ends? I don’t think so. The EMS Museum & Art Gallery also has responsibilities to the Commonwealth as part of the university’s land grant mission. This means we are part of a large, loosely formed network of educational institutions, professional and avocational societies--and yes, other museums--to ensure that significant samples and specimens are not only preserved for future generations, but to make sure that they can be used for emerging societal needs and new research questions.

These ‘extended’ roles are what make a museum ‘framework’ agile. We are good at gauging and responding to the needs of the communities we serve, whether those needs are to facilitate new analyses of old ore samples from long-ago reclaimed mines that may hold rare earth treasures, or to provide snapshots of historic soil microbiomes critical for understanding recent changes to climate and fertility, or to explore changing cultural perspectives on gender and labor in the earth industries. Increasingly, responding to the needs of our local communities through digitization and the creation of online resources have created opportunities for global impact. Online and networked collections mean that small museums can have an outsized impact on communities who have never walked through the door.

In addition to the 4800 gallery visitors and 2500 people we reached through outreach activities last year, we also mentored internship projects for five students across EMS , art, anthropology, and history. These interns learned valuable research and analytical skills, often translating this new knowledge into public-facing exhibits. Over 17 student curation assistants and volunteers spent over 3000 hours in our collections engaged in hands-on, experiential learning through doing. Some of these students have career goals that involve museums—and these experiences, no doubt, have been critical to their Penn State training. However, more of these students will go on to become artists, engineers, and scientists. Their museum experiences in mineral identification, artifact conservation, data analysis, and science communication are also key to growth and development in their chosen fields.

We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished over the last year and we’re very thankful to the dozens of students, volunteers, faculty and researchers…and the thousands of visitors, educators, and schoolchildren that have made this year a success. 

The mission of the Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum & Art Gallery is to serve the college, University, and broader community as an informed educational and technical resource for science, art, and history of the earth and mineral sciences through the preservation, utilization, and promotion of our diverse collections.