Hannah Black uses a drop spindle to spin yarn along side the Centre Spinners at the People’s Choice Festival of Pennsylvania Arts & Crafts at the Pennsylvania Military Museum in Boalsburg on Friday, July 12, 2019.
Abby Drey
adrey@centredaily.com
Chris Kuhns says he began receiving requests to help the People’s Choice Festival of Pennsylvania move back to the Pennsylvania Military Museum within days of starting his tenure as the museum’s director last year. Now, those wishes have come true.
The museum will welcome People’s Choice organizers and attendees back to its grounds in Boalsburg in July after the annual “homegrown” festival briefly moved to Centre Hall. The return brings the event back to where it debuted in 1993.
“We’re all pretty happy to see it come back to Boalsburg,” said Kuhns.
Kuhns, who became the museum’s director last June, was not around when People’s Choice organizers packed up for Centre Hall in 2022. At the time, festival officials said continuing the event on the museum’s grounds was not an option, while a museum spokesperson claimed People’s Choice had outgrown the facility and its ability to host the event, which often produced traffic and parking issues in the area.
John Madison, co-director of People’s Choice, said festival attendance and engagement have declined since the event moved away from Boalsburg. He estimated roughly 50 artists and 11 food vendors have left the festival, leaving it with a smaller footprint that could allow the Pennsylvania Military Museum to more easily accommodate its scope, Kuhns said.
Event size aside, Kuhns said a considerable challenge for the museum centers on personnel. In years past, the Pennsylvania Military Museum lacked the manpower to properly staff and corral its parking areas — a job usually left to the museum’s members and volunteers.
This year, People’s Choice volunteers will work the parking lots and keep the proceeds. The move will lighten the burden placed on the Pennsylvania Military Museum while providing some extra cash for the festival, said Kuhns, who noted parking was previously a key fundraiser for the facility.
Parking is expected to cost around $10 per vehicle for this year’s festival, which will stretch from July 9-12.
The museum’s membership group, aptly named the Friends of the Pennsylvania Military Museum, will use its freed-up time to help maintain the property’s roughly 75 acres during and after the festival, Kuhns said. Roughly have of the grounds are used for the four-day event, which is known to take its toll on the museum’s grass fields and lots.
The museum’s foreman and repairmen, who comprise nearly half of its five-member staff, will lead the charge to fix ruts in the earth, remove gravel from grassy areas, restore parking areas and replant grass where needed. More volunteers available will make that process move along more easily, Kuhns said.
Frank LaMartina works on a piece of an owl in his booth at the People’s Choice Festival of Pennsylvania Arts & Crafts at the Pennsylvania Military Museum in Boalsburg on Friday, July 12, 2019. LaMartina, from Red Lion, does all graphite and color pencil drawings. Abby Drey adrey@centredaily.com Moving back to Boalsburg
Substantial talks surrounding the move began over the past few months with the help of event organizers, museum staff and other local officials, including Harris Township and the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau. The plan required approval from the Pennsylvania Historic Museum Commission in Harrisburg, which oversees 24 unique sites across the commonwealth.
The collective group reached an agreement to bring People’s Choice back home after spending four years at the Grange Park in Centre Hall, where the festival organizers say the event couldn’t survive for much longer.
“It was a nice place. It worked fine for us, but we just couldn’t draw a big enough crowd out there,” Madison said last week. “We couldn’t get the folks to drive that extra distance, and we needed a little more support than we were getting out there.”
Fritz Smith, president and CEO of the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau, said his organization helped facilitate the key meetings that brought People’s Choice back to Boalsburg. He says the festival’s move to the Pennsylvania Military Museum could boost local tourism during an already-busy week.
“For our part, we want to do what we can to help our events and attractions be successful. For organizers, success for People’s Choice meant a return to Boalsburg,” Smith wrote in a statement. “With People’s Choice, the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts and Art in the Orchard at Way Fruit Farm occurring at the same time, it gives the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau a chance to market the three as a big arts weekend in Happy Valley.”
Planning is underway as People’s Choice gears up for its big return to Boalsburg. If all goes well, the door is open for it to remain on the Pennsylvania Military Museum’s grounds in future years, Kuhns said.
Museum makes moves
The Pennsylvania Military Museum is using the festival’s return to Boalsburg as an opportunity to get in on the fun, too.
Kuhns said his team is working to launch an outreach and exhibition tent on the festival grounds, where Friends of the Museum volunteers could show off relevant artwork. The museum’s booth could feature works from U.S. Marine Corps combat artists and appearances from living historians and reenactors, who would show how soldiers, sailors and Marines created art in the past.
One example, Kuhns said, comes from World War I, during which some troops carved designs into used artillery shells to pass time in the trenches.
“Art is a big thing in the military, and you might not think that at first,” Kuhns said. “As a veteran myself, I can safely say we have a lot of art, a lot of artifacts, that we can bring out and show people and share that there is [artistic] relevance to the military.”
Outreach efforts are key for the museum, which generally does not see increased attendance when People’s Choice sets up in its front yard.
Under directions from the Pennsylvania Historic Museum Commission, facilities are required to track the number of people on museum grounds and the number of people who enter facilities. Past totals from People’s Choice weekends suggest the beloved summer festival is not a driver of attendance for the Pennsylvania Military Museum, according to Kuhns.
“To be honest, it really wasn’t good for business in terms of people coming into the museum,” the director said. “If you look at the numbers, it doesn’t really happen, and that’s understandable. Everyone wants to be outside at the festival. It really didn’t quite help our visitation at all.”
Flowers bloom around the The Pennsylvania Military Museum in Boalsburg on Monday, May 19, 2025. The museum is currently closed for renovations. Abby Drey adrey@centredaily.com
The museum will remain closed through the summer as a $3.4 million renovations project continues.
This story was originally published February 25, 2026 at 1:49 PM.
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