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ALBANY — Criticizing the state of New York's State Museum earned me a tour with its director, who told me as we walked the galleries that an upcoming renovation will result in "a dramatic difference" and a remade visitor experience.

"It's going to be a new New York State Museum," Mark Schaming said.

Terrific! But we've heard that before.

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As I wrote for last weekend's column, Schaming in 2015 told us that the museum would be dramatically remade yet the only visible change is the continuing decline of a beloved Albany institution. What happened to that promise made eight years ago?

Turns out, I was being generous. As an employee of the museum subsequently pointed out, a master plan for remaking the galleries was completed and touted in 2008. Worse, museum leadership also announced a $70 million renovation way back in 1999 as a response to worries about declining attendance and the building's dated appearance.

"The public face of the museum has not been the face that the collection and the staff and the history of the museum deserve,'' Carol Huxley, then the state's deputy commissioner of cultural education, said at the time.

Yikes. I'm no mathematician, but by my calculations those words were uttered 24 years ago — and yet we're still waiting for that facelift. Even if we accept that state government moves at a lumbering pace, this is ridiculous. It took nine years to build the entirety of Empire State Plaza.

In that 2015 announcement, Schaming said an ambitious and exciting renovation master plan was done and the museum's remake would be completed by decade's end. When I asked him about that prediction during my amiable if occasionally awkward tour Thursday, he conceded it was overly ambitious given the complexity of the changes and the bureaucracy involved.

"It was a bigger project than we anticipated," said Schaming, who became the museum's director in 2013.

But this time it's real, he insisted. Design and construction plans are complete, nearly $14 million in funding is available, and bids will go out soon. The public will get to see all the compelling details this fall, and that, Schaming said, is when a timeline will also be revealed.

Given that babies born at the time of the 1999 announcement have graduated from college, I wondered why anyone should have faith that the coming renovation will any more real than unicorns prancing up Madison Avenue. (Those may not have been my exact words.)

"It never advanced before to where we are now," Schaming said. "It's an exciting project, and it's actually happening."

I hope so, given the importance of the State Museum to this region and the need for Albany to offer more to visitors and families. Time will tell.

On Thursday, Schaming's tour took me to the (closed) carousel, the (closed) subway car and the (closed) Discovery Center for children, explaining the unexpected or supposedly unavoidable circumstances behind the prolonged shutdowns. Each is expected to reopen this summer.

I was also told that getting new vendors for the (closed) retail store and (closed) restaurant is difficult, given that the planned renovations — more details coming this fall! — will require sections of the museum to be padlocked during construction.

An optimist, then, might hope that the embarrassing state of today's State Museum represents the lull before the rebirth and that all these concerns will be wiped away when renovations are complete some untold number of years into the future.

But my optimism is tempered by the significant number of current and former employees who have reached out concerned about the museum's drift, its demoralized staff, and similar problems affecting the state library and archives, which also fall under the state Department of Education's Office of Cultural Education.

What the museum-going public sees, I'm told, is merely the tip of the iceberg.

Several employees have also raised concerns about Schaming becoming the deputy commissioner of cultural education while remaining director of the museum — the suggestion being that two big roles are too much for one person and that stretching Schaming so thin shows the museum is a low priority.

When I asked Schaming about those concerns, he passed the question to Sharon Cates-Williams, executive deputy commissioner at the Education Department, who happened to be among the gaggle of five that accompanied me around the galleries.

"I think he's doing a good job wearing two hats," Cates-Williams said. "It does not interfere with the core mission of the museum, and it's a decision that we stand by."

Well, OK. But I don't think anyone can look at the ridiculously extended wait for renovations and conclude that everything is peachy at the State Museum, or that it's receiving the attention it deserves from state officials and the elected lawmakers at the far end of the plaza.

If Huxley's comment about the disappointing face of the museum was accurate 24 years ago, it's certainly true now.