Category Archives: Governance and management

Is Your Historic Site Unsure About Next Steps?

In this uncertain environment, many organizations are unsure about the direction to pursue for their historic site or house museum.  Through a self-study process and a personal assessment by an external professional colleague, the Museum Assessment Program (MAP) offers a thoughtful and proven approach to refine your operations, programs, and collections.  I’ve participated in several MAPs and clever organizations have used it to confirm a strategy, refine a project, resolve a vexing issue, support a funding proposal, or move to the next level of operations.  I can’t think of a better program available, except if you’re accredited by AAM, you have a large professional staff, or if you’re able to afford a large team of experts.  Really.  To stay sharp, every historic site and house museum in America needs to go through this program every decade and in between, they should be tackling a section of AASLH’s Standards and Excellence Program.  Really. If you’re not sure, call the director of the historic sites that participated this year:  Montpelier Mansion (Maryland), Old Barracks Museum (New Jersey), Louis Armstrong House (New York), Seward House (New York), Stewart House (Ohio), French Legation Museum (Texas), Poplar Forest (Virginia), and Pabst Mansion (Wisconsin).

To participate, your organization needs to meet some basic requirements (such as be open to the public at least 90 days a year), Continue reading →

AASLH Meeting in Salt Lake City Today

I’m currently at the annual meeting of the American Association for State and Local History in Salt Lake City, Utah, not only enjoying the camaraderie of friends and colleagues, but also attending a board meeting, moderating two sessions, and speaking at a  breakfast of historic house museum and visitor research leaders.  If you are attending, I’d love to meet you so please say hello (as a reader of this blog, you have the advantage!) or stop by:

  • Historic House Museums and Visitor Voices Breakfast on Friday, October 5 at 7 am, when Conny Graft and I will be discussing the perception gap between visitors and historic sites.
  • Re-imaging Historic Sites:  Three Roads to the Same Destination on Friday, October 5 at 10:45 am.  I’ll be joined by visitor research consultant Conny Graft, preservation architect Barbara Campagna, and house museum director Gwendolen Raley.
  • Meshing Mission and Community:  Identifying Strategies for Engagement on Saturday, October 6 at 9:00 am.  I’ll be joined by Deborah Schwartz of the Brooklyn Historical Society and Lorraine McConaghy of the Museum of History and Industry.

When I return, I’ll have lots to share so look for those posts in the coming weeks.

Highlights from the Latest Journal of Travel Research

I doubt many people read the Journal of Travel Research (yes, there are such things!) but I’ve been referring to it in preparation for a presentation at the Historic House Museum Consortium of Washington, DC.  Looking at the September 2012 issue of the Journal of Travel Research, I thought I’d share some of the highlights from articles that might interest historic sites and house museums:

  • In “GPS as a Method for Assessing Spatial and Temporal Use Distributions of Nature-Based Tourists,” Jeffery Hallo et al examine the use of GPS devices to study visitor behavior in national parks (an idea that can be easily be applied to large historic sites).  This research typically has to be done either by asking visitors to recall their experiences in a survey or by asking visitors to record their own behavior in diaries–both cumbersome and highly subjective methods.  GPS provides a better way to study human behavior, but so far the inaccuracy and cost has been major hurdles.  A test of three of the newest GPS devices, however, shows that these hurdles have been overcome by Continue reading →

HBO CEO named Mt. Vernon CEO; A Step Backwards IMHO

George Washington’s Mount Vernon

Today, Curtis G. Viebranz becomes the president and chief executive officer of George Washington’s Mount Vernon.  Unfortunately, this decision by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association is a step backward for its mission, history, education, preservation, and ironically, women, too.  Viebranz succeeds James C. Rees III, who retired in June.  Here’s an excerpt from the official announcement:

Viebranz brings to Mount Vernon more than twenty years of experience at major multinational Internet and cable enterprises, including a successful tenure as president of HBO International, the global arm of Time Warner’s Home Box Office unit. Prior to that, as Time Warner turned its attention to digital distribution strategies, Viebranz was tapped to serve as the first president of Time Inc. Multimedia. During his seventeen-year career at Time Warner and its predecessor company, Time Inc., Viebranz built an impressive resume, also serving as president of Time Inc. Europe and HBO Video.

After departing Time Warner, Viebranz helped to launch Continue reading →

AASLH Workshops for Historic Sites

The American Association for State and Local History offers a wide range of educational workshops and professional training that is particularly helpful for staff and volunteers for work at historic sites and house museums–if you know where to look.  I’ve previously mentioned the sessions during its annual meeting but people often forget that it also has half-day and day-long workshops before and after the annual meeting to explore topics in depth.  What most people don’t know is that you can register for just these workshops; you don’t have to attend the annual meeting–a great advantage for local folks!

This year, AASLH is offering 14 workshops, including:

What Sites Can Learn from the Olympics

The summer Olympic games in London are now over and if you were watching, I bet you not only reveled in the athletic competition, but you also contemplated the logistics and expenses.  Those of us who work at historic sites don’t experience events like most other people.  Sure, we like the music, food, and tours, but we also look at the placement of signs, calculate ratios between attendance and restrooms, check out the store for items we can sell, and mentally map out visitor circulation and note the bottlenecks.  Or is that just me?

The Olympics is just another special event, although it’s huge and involves a cast of thousands and decades of planning.  The designers and planners of this event are the best of the best, so what can historic sites, at a much smaller scale, learn from their experience?  One of the most valuable lessons is that Continue reading →

Making Mission and Vision Visible: Put it by the Coffee Pot

A recent visit to Museum L-A in Maine, a local history museum serving the communities of Lewiston and Auburn, revealed a clever way to keep the mission and vision visible and prominent.  They were posted on large boards in the conference room above the refreshments–whenever a group met, they couldn’t miss these reminders of the organization’s purpose and direction.

Their mission and vision were developed through a community-wide facilitated process led by E. Verner Johnson and they came up with statements that go far beyond the typical “collect, preserve, and educate”:

Mission

Museum L-A strengthens community and connections between generations by documenting and celebrating the economic, social, and technological legacy of L-A and its people.

Vision

Museum L-A chronicles the history of work, industry and community in Lewiston and Auburn; serves as a community gathering place; creates engaging learning experiences; and contributes to the civic, cultural, and economic revitalization of L-A.

For more details, see their strategic plan highlights on their website.  I was pretty impressed with this local history museum, so you’ll find a post or two about it in the future.

Put Your Organization to the Rorschach Test

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

If you’re finding that your organization is in a rut and you no longer feel as inspired about its work, it might be useful to look at it in a new way by creating a “word cloud” of key documents, such as a strategic plan, mission and vision statements, interpretive themes, or visitor evaluation.  A word cloud is a visual presentation of the most frequently used words, sized by frequency.  For example, if you use the word “history” ten times more than “preservation” in your strategic plan, “history” shows up much larger than “preservation” in the word cloud.  The word cloud allows you to look at your organization from a different perspective: words jump out at you and prompt questions about what’s being emphasized (and what’s not).

As examples, in the slide show above I’ve assembled word clouds from the first few paragraphs of the About section of the websites (which often includes the mission or vision statements) of the following historic sites:

I’ve used word clouds in strategic planning sessions to Continue reading →

AASLH Council Meets in Maine

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This past Saturday, the Council (aka board) of the American Association for State and Local History met in Maine for one of their three regular meetings each year.  It’s been a tough few months due to the discovery of embezzlement and fraud within the organization, so this meeting had been preceded by nearly a dozen additional meetings of the Council and several committees by conference call to deal with various aspects related to the situation, potential threats to the organization, and improvements to our current financial management by reviewing and revising various policies, procedures, and practices.  This meeting adopted revised financial policies and procedures; adopted revised codes of ethics for board, staff, and organization; adopted a revised conflict of interest policy for board and staff; and discussed how the by-laws may need to revise the finance and audit committee responsibilities as well reconsider how Council members are elected to ensure we have sufficient people on board with financial skills.  We also began working more strategically, looking longterm to identify priorities so we can preserve those programs that matter most to members and most effectively fulfill the mission.  History News and the annual meeting/conference rose to the top as expected, but Continue reading →

Sold! Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio in Oak Park

Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, Oak Park, Illinois

On Monday, the National Trust for Historic Preservation sold Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio in Oak Park, Illinois but don’t worry, it’ll still be preserved and open to the public.  It was acquired by the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust, who has been operating and managing the site for nearly four decades and I suspect will be there for many more.  In the 1970s, the FLWPT was a fledging organization that was attempting to save the Prairie-style home and studio of Frank Lloyd Wright, which had become badly deteriorated and cut up into a half dozen apartments by a private owner.  It didn’t have the ability to purchase the property when it came up for sale, so they partnered with the National Trust to buy the property.  The FLWPT would eventually repay the National Trust for its half of the $260,000 purchase price but in the meantime, the National Trust would hold the title and lease it to the FLWPT at a nominal price.  The success of this venture prompted these two organizations to partner on the preservation of the Robie House, a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece which is owned by the University of Chicago but was badly maintained (another example of a university mistreating historic places!).  With the sale of the Home and Studio, the Robie House partnership is also concluded and the FLWPT will work directly with the University.

I’m not sure what the change in relationship means, but just a few days ago, the Robie House and Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio were National Trust Historic Sites, two of 29 historic places sprinkled across the United States.  It’s a ragtag collection that by itself makes no interpretive sense, doesn’t adequately represent American history or culture, isn’t connected by ownership (some NTHS are owned by others) or management (most NTHS are operated by other non-profits), and wasn’t formed to achieve a specific strategy or vision (they were mostly added as opportunities arose, donors made offers, or presidents were seduced).   But with this transition, I hope it sparks some discussion around two important national issues for historic sites: Continue reading →