For now, the man wishes to remain anonymous, but his longtime art dealer, an Altoona native, a current city resident and the eventual museum director Patrick Wilshire has been supervising renovations that will turn the building into a site for display and storage of artworks created from about 1970 onward depicting imaginary characters and scenes from role-playing games, science fiction, modern secular myths and solely from the minds of the artists themselves.

The art that will be displayed and stored in the Eidolon Museum of Fantasy and Imaginative Art represents a “very small niche” within the art world, as fantasy and imaginative art is just as slice of realistic art overall, but it nevertheless represents a major chunk of modern culture, given that a significant percentage of movies, TV shows, video games and books being published nowadays fit the genre, Wilshire said.

While fantasy and imaginative elements have become pervasive in the culture, the art that it has generated has received almost “zero significant recognition” — a deficit that the Australian collector hopes to rectify, he said.

There is a Lord of the Rings museum in Switzerland, a museum dedicated to the work of fantasy artist H.R. Giger, also in Switzerland, and a museum dedicated to the work of Frank Frazetta in East Stroudsburg, Wilshire said.

The former YMCA and KNY Family Fitness Center at 900 Lexington Ave. in Altoona will soon be home to a museum for fantasy and imaginative art. Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski

But because of the breadth of its collection, the Eidolon in Altoona “will be the only thing like it in the world,” Wilshire said.

It’s a major deal, according to Altoona Blair County Economic Development Corp. CEO Steve McKnight.

“This project is huge for our economic development and our city’s revitalization efforts,” McKnight wrote in an email. “It will give visitors from across the globe a new reason to visit and potentially relocate and invest in Blair County.”

The Australian collector and Wilshire are patterning the local museum on a museum in Stockbridge, Mass., that houses the work of Norman Rockwell.

That museum draws 150,000 visitors a year, Wilshire said.

The gymnasium of the former KNY Family Fitness Center is seen at the building along Lexington Avenue in Altoona. The building, eventual museum director Patrick Wilshire said, is “gorgeous, with an interior structure that is perfect for a museum.” Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski

The genre in which the Altoona museum will specialize is at least as popular as Rockwell, Wilshire said.

“If it works there, it can work in Altoona,” he said.

Altoona’s virtues include accessibility by highway and rail and its location within six hours’ driving distance of a large percentage of the U.S. population — an area that includes cities like New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Richmond, Cleveland and Buffalo, Wilshire said.

The art to be displayed and stored in the museum after it opens next year or in 2028 will be easily understood, according to Wilshire.

“It won’t need to be explained,” he said.

Eventual museum director Patrick Wilshire walks through a planned gallery room in the former KNY Family Fitness Center at 900 Lexington Ave., Altoona. Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski

That is in contrast to much modern abstract art created during the 20th century, said Wilshire, who gave the Mirror a tour of the unheated building several days ago.

There is a neat symmetry between abstract art and fantasy art, according to Wilshire.

Abstract art takes the known world that actually exists and comments on it in a non-traditional way that can be difficult to grasp, he said.

Fantasy art takes imaginary worlds and expresses them in a traditional way that is easy to grasp, said Wilshire, who with his wife Jeannie, runs an annual fantasy and imaginative art show in Reading called IX Art.

The Australian collector is creating the museum to support, promote and preserve art that fits within the fantasy and imaginative genre, according to Wilshire.

An area inside the former KNY Family Fitness Center is seen. The planned museum is estimated to be able to comfortably display perhaps 500 to 700 pieces at a time and will be able to store thousands of pieces. Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski

The preservation effort has begun with a two- or three-year museum oral history project comprising in-depth, four-hour-long interviews of artists, historians and art directors all over the world, Wilshire said.

A storied history

Fantasy art has a long history, at least back to Greco-Roman times, most of it with a religious cast, with depictions of mythological figures, then Christian religious figures, then legendary Arthurian figures and figures from fairy tales, Wilshire said.

In the early 1900s, there was a flowering of secular fantasy, with figures like Tarzan, Conan the Barbarian, Superman, characters like Cthulhu created by H.P. Lovecraft and characters in Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Wilshire said.

“There was an immense explosion,” Wilshire said. “New concepts, new worlds, new mythologies. … That is the beginning of real imaginative realism.”

The lobby of the former KNY Family Fitness Center at 900 Lexington Ave. in Altoona. Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski

It was largely driven by scientific advancement, he said.

The Eidolon will focus on post-1970s material from that tradition, he said.

The Eidolon founder’s interest in fantasy and imaginative art stems from his childhood, during which he played Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games, Wilshire said.

The founder had been thinking of creating such a museum for perhaps

20 years, but thought he would need to raise funds to build it from scratch, Wilshire said.

Such a museum would likely have been located in Atlanta, where his collection is currently stored in a warehouse, or in a city like Charlotte or Chicago, Wilshire said.

That changed on Feb. 15, 2025, when the founder noticed an online real estate listing for the vacant KNY, Wilshire said.

Knowing Wilshire lived in Altoona, the founder asked via email, “‘Hey, is this near you,'” Wilshire said.

The KNY building is about a mile from Wilshire’s house.

It’s “gorgeous, with an interior structure that is perfect for a museum,” Wilshire said.

That recognition led to negotiations between the two and an agreement that Wilshire would become museum director.

“I happen to be one of the world’s leading authorities” in the fantasy imaginative genre, Wilshire said.

The museum being located in his hometown resulted from “a fabulous confluence of events,” he said.

The project will cost “multiple millions” — an indefinite number that is growing, as ideas for what to do with the museum evolve, Wilshire said.

The Australian collector is funding the whole project without public money, he added, noting the collector works in banking.

Work has been going on for months, and the building is largely gutted.

Plans should be ready for the interior build out in March, Wilshire said.

There will be variously sized gallery spaces, the biggest of which will be in the former gym on the top floor.

In the high-ceilinged gym, there will be three partial-

height partitions running parallel to the former court, to provide 900 linear feet of picture-hanging space, Wilshire said.

There were hopes that a roof deck could be constructed over the gym, but it turned out that the roof beams would have provided inadequate support, Wilshire said.

The multiple panes on the arched, church-like windows in the gym may be replaced with stained glass that depicts figures from Dungeons and Dragons, Wilshire said.

The renovations will include an addition near the parking lot that will provide storage space.

Once it begins operating, the Eidolon will seek connections with scholars who research fantasy and imaginative art and with local colleges, high schools, junior high schools and elementary schools, Wilshire said.

There will be lectures, workshops, programs and resources to pique and sustain interest among students and the community at large, according to Wilshire.

Some pieces in the collection will be on permanent display, while others will rotate between display and storage.

The museum may be able to comfortably display perhaps 500 to 700 pieces at a time, Wilshire estimated, and it will be able to store thousands of pieces.

The rotating displays help ensure that the experience of repeat visitors remains fresh, he said.

The museum will enable visitors to appreciate the art in full — in a way that isn’t possible with print and electronic reproductions, especially with larger pieces, according to Wilshire.

Reproductions tend not to provide the full texture of the originals or the subtleties and play of light in the depths of the original work, he said.

Wilshire expects the museum to be popular.

It will contain many of the kinds of pieces displayed in his annual fantasy and imaginative art show in Reading.

There will be visitors here that will have the reaction his wife overheard once during a tour, when a man having a good time confided to a companion, “‘I thought I was going to hate this,'” Wilshire said.

“It will be a world class institution when we’re done,” he said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.