Jill Frechie produced this 2:00 video explaining Art Splash, a summer program for families at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Emily Schreiner, associate curator of education, explains some of the 300 programs offered during the ten week period, which features a different object each week. Three hundred programs in ten weeks? I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
Category Archives: Community engagement
Changing Attitudes About History one Grizzly at a Time
Politics and Prose, the famous independent bookstore in Washington DC, hosted a booksigning for Tim Grove, chief of museum learning at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, that attracted seventy-five listeners this past Saturday. It’s not often that museum folks share a stage that recently included Patrick Buchanan, Timothy Geithner, Lynn Sherr, and Michelle Obama. His talk will be aired on C-Span.
A self-professed history geek, Tim shares his love for history in A Grizzly in the Mail and Other Adventures in American History (University of Nebraska Press, 2014), a collection of stories from his years working at Colonial Williamsburg, Missouri Historical Society, National Portrait Gallery, and the National Museum of American History. Tim wants to improve the public image of history by demonstrating the fun of history and “help history haters change their minds.” To do this requires provoking a deeper thinking about historical programs and activities to better link past and present As he states in his book,
The staff at [Colonial] Williamsburg and other history sites wants visitors to “experience” history. What does this mean? One can visit Yosemite National Park and experience the beauty and grandeur of nature. One can go whitewater rafting and experience the rush of the river and the cold wetness of the water as it splashes the face. But experiencing history? Do you experience history when you walk the hallowed ground of a battlefield or visit a historical house? Experience in verb form implies action. What action is actually taking place?
Tim demonstrates that “action” through a wide assortment of stories, from conquering a high wheel bicycle and questioning the significance of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin to navigating the legacy of Lewis and Clark, and yes, unpacking a grizzly bear Continue reading
Video: We Are Museums 2014 (Warsaw, Poland)
This 3:45 video gives a quick overview of We Are Museums, a two-day international conference on innovation and creativity within museums. Hosted by the National Gallery of Art and the State Ethnographic Museum, it combines workshops, exhibitions, and presentations. Presenters included Seb Chan of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and Sarah Hromack of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Recent Articles on Historic Sites You May Have Missed
Knowing that most people working at historic sites don’t have access to an academic library, I thought I’d share a few articles around some major topics that caught my eye. This is not a thorough review of the last 18 months, just a casual glance backward to highlight some studies that relate to the preservation, management, and interpretation of historic sites and house museums.
More Professors are Combining Local History and Service Learning to Engage Students
Henthorn, Thomas C. “Experiencing the City: Experiential Learning in Urban Environments.” Journal of Urban History 40, no. 3 (2014): 450-461.
Henthorn describes various student experiences to engage them in history, including a course on American urban history that combines an historical study of Flint, Michigan with an off-campus service learning project and a collections internship in automotive heritage at the Sloan Museum.
He concludes by finding that, “experience and place combine to prepare students for active citizenship. This is arguably the most difficult to instill among students and in the same way one class will not change students understanding of a subject, one experience will not awaken in students a sense of civic responsibility. At the very least, by linking the classroom with the community, students learn to respond creatively to critical issues confronting them. But active citizenship requires Continue reading
Online Learning Opportunities for Historic Site Interpreters
The opportunities for sharpening your skills as an historic site interpreter continue to grow online, sometimes even for free. Here are a sampling of a few non-degree granting organizations where you’ll find workshops and classes on the Internet to keep your thinking fresh and improve your technique. All times are Eastern unless noted.
- Embracing 360 Engagement, Widening the Circle. September 2, 2014 at 2:00 pm Eastern.
- Building Trust through High Performance, Becoming Essential. December 3 at 2:00 pm.
American Association for State and Local History
- Historic House Calls: Using Futures Thinking to Navigate Ongoing Change. August 20, 2014 at 2:00 pm. Free for AASLH members.
- Writing the Grant: What’s the Process Like? August 27 at 3:00 pm. $115; $40 members.
Coursera
- Art and Inquiry: Museum Teaching Strategies for Your Classroom. Ended April 6 but so closely related, I had to mention it.
- Emerging Trends and Technologies in the Virtual K-12 Classroom. Starts August 18, 2014 for 5 weeks. Free.
- Making Better Group Decisions: Voting, Judgment Aggregation, and Fair Division. Starts August 25 for 7 weeks. Free.
- Foundations for Teaching for Learning 1: Introduction. Starts September 1 for 6 weeks. Free.
Video: Museum of Water at Somerset House
This is a 2:38 amateur video documenting the “Museum of Water,” an unusual “live artwork” by Amy Sharrocks at the historic Somerset House, a new arts and culture center in London.
A melted snowman. Droplets from a baby’s bath. Sacred draughts from an Indian river. Just some of the items donated to London’s newest museum. In the atmospheric underground spaces of Somerset House, Amy Sharrocks invites you to consider our relationship with the most precious liquid the world has to offer.
Video: Happy 4th from Philadelphia
In this 1:39 video, Historic Philadelphia features Benjamin Franklin and a dozen living history actors dancing to Pharrel William’s “Happy” on the streets of the City of Brotherly Love. Dozens of ongoing and special events will take place on and around Independence Mall over Independence Week and the summer and this video shows the fun and lively side of its history. It was produced by Historic Philadelphia, Inc. (@HistoricPhilly), Independence Visitor Center (@PHLVisitorCntr), National Constitution Center (@ConstitutionCtr), Visit Philadelphia (@VisitPhilly), and Independence National Historical Park (@INDEPENDENCENHP). More information is available at www.historicphillysummer.com. Thanks to Sandy Lloyd for sharing this video.
Are Bloggers Mostly Educators?
Museum bloggers converse over morning coffee at AAM 2014.
Blogging is a new form of communication, often falling somewhere between professional journalism and personal journaling. There are lots of people who love museums and historic sites, and they’ve spawned lots of blogs devoted exclusively to them (including this one). To give you a sense of this specialized blogosphere, Jamie Glavic at Museum Minute has conducted more than seventy (70!) interviews with museum bloggers.
Last month at the American Alliance of Museums annual meeting in Seattle, Jamie convened an informal gathering of a dozen museum bloggers to meet and chat about their work over morning coffee. I wasn’t able to catch everyone’s name, but the conversation included Rowanne Henry of Museum Stories, Chris O’Connor of the Royal BC Museum, Ed Rodley of Thinking About Museums, Jennifer Foley of Runs with Visitors, Scott Tennent at Unframed, Annelisa Stephan at the Getty Museum, and Kellian Adams at Green Door Labs.
I noticed that most of them were educators, not curators, conservators, collections managers, or administrators, which launched a discussion about the circumstances that seem to be creating this social media distinction in the museum field, including:
- curators and conservators don’t consider blogging as scholarship; it’s not regarded equal to an article or exhibit catalog for measuring job performance or professional development.
- blogs provide a place where educators can be heard and voice their opinions; curators dominate conversations in museums
- blogs require a different type of writing; curators use a language couched in academia, which usually isn’t suitable for blogs
- blogging isn’t a priority for the organization
- blogging doesn’t work well in the institutional culture of museums; blogging requires some comfort with risk and letting go
What do you think? Does the cultural divide between educators and curators continue online? Are the distinctions around museum blogging accurate and true? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Can the Exploratorium Help Us Explore History?
Last week I visited the Exploratorium in its new home on Pier 15 in San Francisco. If you haven’t veen there, it’ll seem like a science center but you’ll quickly discover it’s really a place about learning, especially through direct experiences with art, tinkering, and phenomena (yep, that’s how they describe it). It’s an incredibly active place (almost to the point of overwhelming) that seems to effectively engage its visitors, so I continually watch to see if any of their exhibits or ideas can be applied to historic sites or history museums. During my latest visit, I found two exhibits that with a mild tweak could be really be innovative for interpreting history.
1. Question Bridge: Black Males. This temporary exhibit is, “comprised of many individuals asking and answering questions about the experience of black men in modern America.” Inside the small dark room are Continue reading
Ten Answers to Eleven Questions of Museum Bloggers
On March 19, the Berlin Museum of Natural History launched a series of eleven questions for museum bloggers on Museum Blogger Day, which is slowly making its way around the blogosphere. I received the list of questions from Gretchen Jennings of Museum Commons, who received it from Linda Norris at the Uncatalogued Museum, who received it from Jamie Glavic at Museum Minute, who received it from Jenni at Museum Diary, who received it from the Museum Things blog at Natureskundemuseum. I suppose this might be a new version of the old “chain letter,” but more fun and with no dire consequences if you fail to participate (and of course, the questions were modified along the way, just like a telephone tree). It’s also introduced me to another neighborhood of bloggers!
1. Who are you and what do you like about blogging?
I’m the president of Engaging Places, LLC, a design and strategy firm that connects people to historic places. I love visiting and working with museums and historic sites, so the blog allows me to Continue reading
Engaging Places 