Marcus Armitage and Ignatz Johnson Higham produced this 4:52 video for The School of Life, “explaining why on earth we read books and what they could do for us.” Fun animation with a meaningful message–can this inspire our interpretation of history?
The National Council on Public History will be holding its 2015 conference in Nashville from April 15-18 and there are lots of sessions that will interest house museums and historic sites, including:
Nashville also has many historic sites and NCPH will be offering walking tours and field trips on musical heritage, the state capitol, crime, Civil War, civil rights, and Fisk University. Nearby are several notable historic house museums, including the Hermitage, Belle Meade Plantation, and Belmont Mansion.
Registration is $240 and for members it’s $192. Sign up before March 4 as a member, and it’s only $167. For a copy of the preliminary program, visit http://bit.ly/NCPH2015prog.
My book, Interpreting African American History and Culture at Museums and Historic Sites is now at the press and will be available in December from Rowman and Littlefield. I’ve been assembling it for the past two years and just completed the index, so now it’s firmly in the hands of the publisher. This book is part of a new “interpreting” series launched by Rowman and Littlefield and the American Association for State and Local History. Also released this year are books on topics that include slavery, Native American history and culture, LGBT history, and the prohibition era. If you’d like to order a copy of any of these books at a nice 25 percent discount, use the code 4F14MSTD by December 31, 2014.
Interpreting African American History and Culture at Museums and Historic Sites is another step in a path being laid by many people for nearly 150 years. Although much has been accomplished at museums and historic sites to enhance and improve the interpretation of African American history and culture, we’ve also learned Continue reading
This 6:38 video describes a partnership between the Etowah Valley Historical Society and the Kennesaw State University to map historic sites throughout Etowah Valley in Georgia using GIS with the aid of college interns. Jennifer Leifheit-Little directed the project. You can find some of the results of this project in the interactive historical maps on the historical society’s website, with such topics as African Americans, Native Americans, mining, cemeteries, and Civil War (note: these maps take time to load and most didn’t seem to show any data in my Chrome browser).
EdCom, the Education Professional Network of the American Alliance of Museums, recently revived its web page after a few months on hiatus. You’ll not only find basic information about EdCom, the group that’s focused on education and interpretation in all types of museums (including historic sites), but resources, such as “Excellence in Practice: Museum Education Principles and Standards,” and a suggested bibliography. If you want to keep on news, you’ll want to join them on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.
With the recent restructuring of membership at AAM, you can join any one of the 22 professional networks (there’s even one for Historic House Museums) for free if you’re an individual professional member.
Sustaining San Francisco’s Living History by San Francisco Heritage
The fundamental boundaries of historic preservation have been significantly expanded by San Francisco Heritage, one of the country’s leading historic preservation organizations. In Sustaining San Francisco’s Living History: Strategies for Conserving Cultural Heritage Assets, they state that, “Despite their effectiveness in conserving architectural resources, traditional historic preservation protections are often ill-suited to address the challenges facing cultural heritage assets. . . Historic designation is not always feasible or appropriate, nor does it protect against rent increases, evictions, challenges with leadership succession, and other factors that threaten longtime institutions.” In an effort to conserve San Francisco’s non-architectural heritage, historic preservation must consider “both tangible and intangible [elements] that help define the beliefs, customs, and practices of a particular community.” Did you notice the expanded definition? Here it is again: “Tangible elements may include a community’s land, buildings, public spaces, or artwork [the traditional domain of historic preservation], while intangible elements may include organizations and institutions, businesses, cultural activities and events, and even people [the unexplored territory].”
With many historic preservation organizations, it’s all about the architecture so protecting landscapes, public spaces, and artwork is already a stretch. They’re often not aware that Continue reading
In this 1:28 video, Sarah Barnard shares her visit to Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Illinois, a World Heritage Site and once one of the largest cities in North America. If you interpret historic sites, it demonstrates that many visitors see the tour as just one of many activities during their visit and shows that what they find interesting and significant may be different from the site’s. What I found most interesting is that the huge visitor center with exhibits and store was excluded from the video. No doubt she explored the visitor center (it’s at the entrance) but I suspect it wasn’t as important as seeing the authentic historic site.
In the 2:34 video, Tianwei Studio documents “The Warehouse,” a three-channel video installation installed in an old warehouse in downtown Lubbock, Texas. It’s part of “The Memory Series is a series of site-specific video installations exams personal and collective experiences of memory. Through the over used public imagery, brings historic awareness and collective memory to the obsolete industrial architectural space, where memory is not based on an illusion of static and eternal time, but derives from the awareness of temporal change.” It’s much more aesthetic than interpretive, but you might find some new ideas for interpretive methods (such as filling an entire doorway with a projected image) for your historic site.
Discussing the History Relevance Campaign at a packed session at AASLH in St. Paul. Photo by Lee Wright.
At the American Association for State and Local History annual meeting in St. Paul, the History Relevance Campaign presented an update on their work to a packed audience. During the session, we presented the Impact Project, a year-long process for identifying and studying historic sites and history museums that are making history relevant in their community. The goals of the Impact Project are to:
We are looking for history museums, historic sites, and similar organizations that are Continue reading
Fans of the Gamble House, the Arts-and-Crafts masterpiece created by Greene and Greene in 1908, will either be thrilled or horrified this Halloween season. The Machine Project has transformed the House during the Pasadena Art Council’s two-week AxS Curiosity Festival to reveal the history and visual ideas behind the historic site in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Called the “Field Guide to The Gamble House,” it includes experimental tours and dances, group naps, operatic bird beaks, seances, videos, architectural lawn furniture and a secret Swiss-Japanese fusion restaurant. Complementing those live events, they’ve installed contemporary paintings and sculptures throughout the house to juxtapose today’s artistic ideas with 1908′s architectural style. On-site, hands-on workshops offer lessons in topics ranging from soap-making (a tribute to the family’s business) to solar robotics, from Craftsman-style cat houses to basic electronics, bringing the Arts and Crafts movement in parallel with today’s Maker groups.
Here’s a rundown of some of the events: Continue reading
Engaging Places 