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.
Category Archives: Historical interpretation
Know a Museum or Site Making an Impact with History?
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:
- Increase the use of history as a way to understand and address critical community issues.
- Help board members and staff make an impact in their communities by integrating best practices into their strategic and interpretive plans
- Encourage AASLH and other professional associations to include standards on community relevance and impact
- Encourage academic programs in history, public history, and museum studies to include community relevance and impact in their curriculum
- Encourage elected officials, funders, and communities to provide more support for history organizations that are making an impact
- Provide every Governor with at least one example of history organizations that are making an impact in their state
We Need Your Help
We are looking for history museums, historic sites, and similar organizations that are Continue reading
Arts-and-Crafts Meets Machine at the Gamble House
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
Video: Walkthrough the Mauritshuis ‘Het Gebouw’ exposition
Mauritshuis, the 17th-century house in the Netherlands that has an extraordinary collection of Dutch and Flemish paintings has recently reopened following a two-year renovation. This 1:45 video shows the new temporary interactive exhibit about the building developed by Haute Technique.
Video: Using Technology to Reinvent the Field Trip
[youtube http://youtu.be/yOlSHShLynU?list=PLy704ec655lwz-c9dHue_MtxyS6Qnbz8r]
This 5-minute explains how the Minnesota Historical Society is reinventing the museum field trip through mobile and interactive video conferencing technology, creating personalized, accessible student learning experiences that connect the museum’s rich resources and immersive environments with in-school and out-of-school learning. This was produced a couple years ago, so I’ll be anxious to see where they are now when I visit this week during the AASLH annual meeting.
A Simple Tool to Keep Users Engaged with Your Website (or Exhibit or Program)
If you haven’t been to Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC in the last ten years, you’ve missed a major makeover. Not only are the chairs in the theater more comfortable, but it has dramatically updated its interpretation. An extensive interactive exhibit on Lincoln and the Civil War (including Booth’s gun!) now fills the basement. Across the street, the Petersen House (“the house where Lincoln died” and the federal government’s first historic house museum) has been joined with the adjacent office building to provide several floors of exhibits and programs. Now it’s in the midst of creating Remembering Lincoln, a new website that will commemorate the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination by collecting, digitizing, and sharing local responses from the 13 months following his death. It won’t launch until 2015, but in the meantime they are sharing their progress and most importantly, their process on a blog.
It’s essential that you know the purpose and goals with any project, but even more so when there are more than a dozen institutional partners. You’ve got to be clear about what you’re trying to achieve to keep you focused—you don’t want people pulling in different directions. To keep their eyes on the road, Ford’s Theatre developed a “product definition document” for the Remembering Lincoln website which: Continue reading
Upcoming Workshop on Understanding Audiences
If you want to engage your audiences to build support and increase your impact, you first need to understand their interests, needs, and motivations. In today’s busy world, the traditional tactics of advertising, rackcards, and signs are no longer sufficient to attract visitors to museums and historic sites. We have to refresh our understanding of today’s audiences and develop new approaches that will engage them.
On September 22, 2014 from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm, I’ll be facilitating a one-day workshop on Understanding Audiences at the Middlesex County Community College in Edison, New Jersey. Sponsored by the New Jersey Historical Commission and New Jersey Historic Trust, this is part of a series of three workshops on engagement for nonprofit history organizations. The workshop will be based on the Standards and Excellence Program for History Organizations of the American Association for State and Local History. Registration is $20 (a bargain) and includes breakfast and lunch (even better!); deadline is September 18.
Pushing the Period Room Beyond the Period at Hunter House
Hunter House, Newport, Rhode Island.
Last week I was in Newport, Rhode Island (no, I wasn’t traveling with the President; I was conducting a marketing assessment for an historic site) and visited Hunter House, the historic house that prompted the formation of the Preservation Society of Newport County. Today the Society is best known for its Gilded Age Mansions (or Cottages depending on your point of view). Hunter House has a beautiful view of the harbor but it’s off the beaten path and focused on colonial history, which doesn’t attract the crowds who make the pilgrimage to The Breakers and other grand estates along Bellevue Avenue.
The lower profile gives Hunter House the opportunity to try a different approach to period rooms, one that I find much more successful from an interpretive perspective. Although visitors often believe that period rooms show how people actually lived, curators know they are exhibits created to evoke an era. While they may contain authentic furnishings, they are often displayed or arranged in inauthentic ways for aesthetics, safety, security, or lack of sufficient knowledge. Period rooms are also victims of tradition and nostalgia–how many times have you seen Continue reading
Why History Matters is Foundational to Historic Site Interpretation
Historic Site Interpretation Class, Fall 2014, Museum Studies Program, George Washington University.
My annual fall class on interpreting historic sites and house museums started yesterday at George Washington University, and as usual, I’ve made some revisions to the course syllabus. Not only does my thinking continue to evolve through my experiences working with sites across the country and from the work of my colleagues in the field, but my students provide a lengthy evaluation at the conclusion of each semester.
I’ve increasingly found that in our efforts to create programming and activities that engage the public at historic sites, we often forget why we’re doing it. After all, if you don’t know why you’re interpreting an historic site, it’s very difficult to know how to do it well. So this year I’m starting the course with the writings of three different people who were passionate about history and saw historic places as meaningful and valuable aspects of our lives: Ada Louise Huxtable, Dolores Hayden, and Gerda Lerner. My students had never heard of any of them, so I’m delighted to introduce them for our study of historic site interpretation. In case you want to read along, here are the first week’s assignments:
- “Where Did We Go Wrong?” (1968) and “Lively Original Versus Dead Copy” (1965) in Goodbye History, Hello Hamburger by Ada Louise Huxtable (1986)
- “Contested Terrain,” chapter 1 in The Power of Place by Dolores Hayden (1995)
- “Why History Matters,” chapter 12 in Why History Matters by Gerda Lerner (1997)
This class will be reading dozens of articles this semester but we also have a set of core books:
- Interpreting Historic House Museums edited by Jessica Foy Donnelly (Altamira, 2002)
- Design for How People Learn by Julie Dirksen (New Riders, 2012)
- Interpretation: Making a Difference on Purpose by Sam H. Ham (Fulcrum, 2013)
Donnelly’s book, alas, is now a dozen years old and it’s becoming more difficult to assign. It still contains good ideas but the case studies are aging, the impact of the Internet is barely felt, and the growing emphasis on visitor research, intentionality, and social relevance are not addressed adequately. And surprisingly, so many of the authors have left the museum field (what does that say about our profession?). If you’ve found a good book on the theory and methodology of interpreting historic sites suitable for graduate students, please share it in the comments below.
Video: Aurora Indiana Moveable Feast
Indiana Landmarks‘ “Moveable Feasts” are three summer evening events that each feature a different place in Indiana through a multi-course progressive dinner at several historic sites, along with walking tours, presentations, and films. This 2:00 video provides an overview of the June 13, 2014 Moveable Feast in Aurora, Indiana on the banks of the Ohio River. Cost is $50; $45 for members.
Engaging Places 