Category Archives: Cultural diversity

Lincoln’s Cottage Breaks Ground on Gay Weddings for Military

Travis Hollenbeck and Daniel Vukelich at their ground-breaking wedding at President Lincoln’s Cottage

Travis Hollenbeck and Daniel Vukelich not only started a new life together by getting married on April 28, 2012, but they also broke new ground at President Lincoln’s Cottage, a National Trust Historic Site at the Soldiers’ Home in Washington, DC–it was the first wedding held at the site and perhaps the first same-sex wedding at a U. S. military base. Over 150 friends and family attended.

Hollenbeck and Vukelich chose Lincoln’s Cottage because of its personal Continue reading →

Interpretive Planning for Dozens of Sites

Arroyo Seco Parkway National Scenic Byway Interpretive Plan produced by Engaging Places for the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority in May 2012.

If you’re interpreting a group of sites or a heritage area, you might be interested in reviewing an interpretive plan I completed earlier this year for the Arroyo Seco Parkway National Scenic Byway. When the Parkway was completed in 1940, it connected Los Angeles and Pasadena and began southern California’s Freeway Age. It’s also a region that has a dense concentration of museums, historic sites, parks, historic Main Streets, architectural landmarks, and unique businesses, including the Gamble House, Huntington Library, Lummis Home, Heritage Square, and Olvera Street. To bring attention to these cultural riches, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority commissioned me to develop this plan and work with a local stakeholders, build on an inventory of assets developed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and integrate audience research conducted by the Community Land Use and Economic Group and Decision Support Partners.

The planning process followed a traditional approach by collecting content to develop topics and themes; conducting visitor research to identify target audiences; and finally Continue reading →

Boston MFA takes Flight with New American Wing

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, one of the great public museums established just after the Civil War, has recently opened “Art of the Americas,” a new wing filled with its outstanding collections of American fine and decorative arts. As some of you know, the Boston MFA underwent a controversial restructuring more than a decade ago, shifting from departments organized by media (e.g., paintings, ceramics, furniture) to geography (e.g., Europe, Asia, and America) and firing some longtime curators (including Jonathan Fairbanks, who created the American Decorative Arts and Sculpture department at the MFA). I’m assuming one of the results of this restructuring is “Art of the Americas.” This four-story exhibit consists of 53 galleries tracing the history of art from pre-Columbian to Modern periods for the continents of North and South America, so along with the expected Chippendale chairs and Copley portraits, there are Peruvian funerary urns and Acoma pots. It’s so large that it took me nearly three hours just to cruise through it at a walking pace and I didn’t make it to the fourth floor, which explored the 20th century.

Unlike most art museums, the exhibit mixes Continue reading →

Field Trip: Homestead Museum in California

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Last week I had a chance to visit with my colleagues at the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum in the City of Industry, California. I was the assistant director there a decade ago and it continues to be a special place to me (if you haven’t visited, it has great architecture and a great story). After a generous lunch with the staff, director Karen Graham Wade and some of her staff took me to see the Workman House, the earliest house on the site. It’s undergoing extensive interior rehabilitation to make it more suitable and attractive as an exhibit gallery. It’s part of a major effort to respond to the changing interests of their visitors by increasing the self-guided experiences. They are also reducing the number of days per week the Homestead Museum will be open for walk-in public tours and increasing the number of days they’ll be open for tours by appointment and for other activities. At La Casa Nueva, the second house on site, they are Continue reading →

Take Advantage of the Ten Cultural Trends for 2012

JWT Intelligence has just released its Ten Trends for 2012 based on surveys of Americans and Britons and interviews with experts and influencers. If you can’t afford to buy copy of their full report for $250, here’s a summary plus some suggestions for taking advantage of them:

Navigating the New Normal: The economy won’t be back to the way it was for some time, so consumers are now becoming price conscious by habit. Consider stripped down offerings (such as smaller sizes of products in your museum store) or some access at lower cost (such as a “grounds only” admission fee).
Live a Little: Although they don’t want to pay a lot, visitors are becoming anxious to splurge on a few good things responsibly. Adjust your programs so they promote both the fun experience and extraordinary aspects of your site (and be sure you can deliver it–just saying your tours are fun and extraordinary doesn’t make it so).
Generation Go: 20-somethings are struggling Continue reading →

Grants Awarded for Experimental Interpretive Research

Congratulations to Jebney Lewis, Sandy Lloyd, Philip Seitz, and Randall Mason on their 2011 HPP Awards for Interpretive Inquiry and Investigation from the Heritage Philadelphia Program (HPP) of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Formerly known as the HPP Scholars in the Interpretation of History, this professional development opportunity supports individual practitioners in the investigation of imaginative projects in public history by connecting the present to the past in engaging, imaginative, and meaningful ways; responding to audience/community interests or needs; and
demonstrating a complex understanding and presentation of history. There are four recipients this year, an unprecedented number:

Jebney Lewis for We Make the City. Lewis will develop and construct a small exhibit with a focus on the intersection of Broad and Market Streets between the years 1900–10. It will examine “how the aspirations of the industrializing city were embodied in the creation of grand expressions of pride and ostentation,” as illustrated through Continue reading →

African American Historic Place Demolished in Virginia, Despite Protests

The Masonic Lodge in Hobson, recently destroyed by the City of Suffolk, Virginia. In this 2002 photo, then-Suffolk Councilman E. Dana Dickens III is seen with Hobson resident Mary Ellen Hill, who was one of the two women arrested Monday on misdemeanor charges during an unsuccessful attempt to save the former Masonic Lodge building, seen behind them. Virginian-Pilot file photo.

A Masonic Lodge that was the centerpiece of Hobson, an early 20th century African American waterman’s community in Virginia, was recently demolished by the City of Suffolk, despite protests from the local community and standing in front of the bulldozers. The 1950 Masonic Lodge served as a community meeting place, general store, school, philanthropic organization, and rallying point for political activism in the village of Hobson, which was recently placed on the Virginia Landmarks Register. Only portions of downtown Suffolk are locally protected as historic districts.

According to the October 25, 2011 edition of the Virginian-Pilot:

In a last-ditch effort to save a historic building from the bulldozer Monday morning, two community activists placed themselves inside a circa-1912 former Masonic Lodge in the rural village of Hobson and pleaded with police to send a city wrecking crew away. Instead, police arrested Continue reading →