St. Paul's Schubert Club, the state's oldest arts organization, is best known for its concerts and educational programs. But the club also runs a free museum in the downtown Landmark Center that houses historic instruments and original letters from composers.

Today the club announced a major renovation and expansion of the museum, which will add space and make its musical treasures more accessible on one floor of the Landmark.

The changes will begin this summer when the second floor galleries -- containing the Gilman Ordway Manuscript Collection -- close for construction. The lower-level gallery, with its trove of old instruments, will stay open through the summer. All the items will then be consolidated in the newly constructed 4,500 square-foot gallery on the second floor, with a planned reopening in November.

The museum has more instruments than it's been able to display, and the additional space will allow more of the artifacts to be seen. It also will allow larger groups to tour.  The current set-up allows only five to 10 visitors at a time.

And even with the changes, admission will still be free.

The museum's keyboard collection began in 1972, with the donation of a piano that had been played by Johannes Brahms. There's also a spinet built in 1542 and many other historic instruments. The manuscript collection includes handwriting originals from Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Frédéric Chopin, Joseph Haydn, Felix Mendelssohn, W.A. Mozart, Franz Schubert, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, to drop a few names.