Category Archives: Historical interpretation

History Organizations Gathering Awards

The American Alliance of Museums announced the winners of its 2013 Museum Publications Design Competition, which identifies the best in graphic design in fifteen different categories.  This is a juried competition and we send our congratulations to all, but especially to (given the bias of this blog):

  • Drake Well Museum for their journal, Oilfield
  • Kentucky Historical Society for educational resources.
  • US Holocaust Memorial Museum for their 2011-12 annual report
  • Museum of Flight (Seattle) for their 2011 annual report
  • Museum of the City of New York for the journal, City Courant
  • National Archives for their Girl Scout Welcome Activity Badge Cards
  • Peabody Essex Museum for their members magazine, Connections
  • Peabody Essex Museum for invitations to the Cultural Conversation and Ansel Adams events
  • Peabody Essex Museum for educational resources
  • Shaker Museum (Mount Lebanon) for the 2012/13 annual journal

I love good design and I applaud all the winners.  One thing about design contests, however, is that they’re only about design Continue reading →

Video: Touring Historic Sites by Kayak

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x10dz5w_historic-new-england-kayak-tours_sport?search_algo=2

Connecticut Coastal Kayaking provides tours along the waterways, including historic Mystic Seaport (yes, the video’s title is “Historic New England Kayak Tours” but it’s not being offered by Historic New England–but perhaps it should!).   Here’s a 2:35 video showing you what it looks like from the water (what an appropriate way to see and interpret waterfront towns!).  Sorry about the ad.

History News for Spring 2013 Arrives

History News, Spring 2013

History News, Spring 2013

It’s mid-June and the spring 2013 issue of History News just arrived.  If you’re wondering why it’s late, it’s my fault.

Katherine Kane and Bob Beatty invited me to write an article that would highlight this year’s annual meeting theme: “Turning Points:  Ordinary People, Extraordinary Change.”  I was honored—and challenged.  Heroic stories of ordinary Americans changing history would be inspirational but too easy.  So I focused on us —the ordinary people who work in history organizations—to explore how we can provoke extraordinary change in our communities and audiences.  Nice idea, but it went through a dozen revisions that trampled deadlines in the process.  I hope it’s worth the wait.  I’ll be posting excerpts from it along with the entire article starting next week (have to give the AASLH members first opportunity!).

But if you don’t find my article satisfying, there are plenty of alternatives in this issue: Continue reading →

Top Ten Ideas to Build Effective Museum Experiences

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A couple weeks ago, I was part of a workshop on building effective museum experiences on June 3, 2013 at Historic London Town and Gardens in Edgewater, Maryland.  Thanks to a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, they’ve partnered with the Maryland Historical Trust to present a series of workshops for museums and historic sites in the region.

For this workshop, they assembled an outstanding team of speakers:

In the afternoon, we broke into several groups.   I led a discussion with Tom Mayes on creating tours using techniques from narrative non-fiction, giving participants a chance to try Continue reading →

Video: Russian Museum of Architecture promo

http://vimeo.com/66306288

And now for something completely different, a one-minute video promoting the Museum of Architecture in Russia.  Created by Saatchi Russia, it’s a humorous spin on the “little old ladies” that guard museums and historic sites.  If you understand Russian, could you tell us what’s going on?

Video: 100 Riffs

Musician Alan Chadwick of the Chicago Music Exchange plays a history of rock and roll in twelve minutes using one hundred guitar riffs.  Rock and roll is broad category of different music styles, so here’s an example of how to explain the diversity quickly to an audience.  If it’s possible to interpret a complex history with an intangible collection, can it be adapted for physical sites that cover many centuries and families?

Managing Timelines for Research and Interpretation

Aeon Timeline by Scribblecode.

Aeon Timeline by Scribblecode.

If you’ve ever been involved in researching or interpreting an historic site, you’ve no doubt assembled a timeline to keep track of events and understand connections between the site, region, and nation.  After you assemble a lot of data, managing those relationships becomes incredibly complex and you’re continually updating charts and reshuffling cards.  Help may be on the way through Aeon Timeline by Scribblecode, a timeline tool for fiction writers which can be easily adapted for historical research and interpretation.  It’s currently only available for the Mac for $40, but next year they will introduce a version for PC.

Like any timeline, you can plot dates of events, put them into categories (e.g., local or national), and display them neatly and chronologically.  Even better, it can zoom in or out so you can examine the details or see the big picture.  That’s nice, and you might be able to figure out how to manipulate a document, spreadsheet, or database to do this for you. But Aeon Timeline goes further by allowing you to tag events and add notes to provide depth, and you can add layers for people or places to visually keep track of what happens to whom or where.  If you’re exploring narrative non-fiction or using storytelling techniques in historical interpretation, it will help you construct arcs and identify turning points.  Watching the introductory video can explain the features better than I can, but if you’re creating a tour, exhibit, or article, this might help you organize ideas much better than the traditional outline or stack of cards.  You can download a 20-day demo version for free but if you want to buy it, Aeon Timeline is available for a 20 percent discount until June 14 at http://www.scribblecode.com/summerfest.html.

National Youth Program Award Finalists Offer Inspiration to Sites

The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, and its cultural partners, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, recently recognized 50 exceptional programs for their work in providing  rich arts and humanities learning opportunities for young people. The National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award is the nation’s highest honor for out-of-school arts and humanities programs that celebrate the creativity of America’s young people, particularly those from underserved communities.

According to the IMLS news release, “From small towns to big cities, the 2013 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award Finalists reflect the diversity of disciplines and settings of these wonderful programs that are taking place from coast to coast.”  Hmm.  The 2013 finalists are overwhelmingly heavy with Continue reading →

Video: Food Critic Reviews Museum Cafe

Tom Sietsema, the food critic for the Washington Post, provides a rare video review of Mitsitam, the cafe at the National Museum of the American Indian.  It is one of the few good places on the Mall to eat (which is a culinary wasteland for the most part) and does an outstanding job of interpreting cultures through food.

Video: Atlanta Lamppost

This video is one of the forty multimedia stops in a new “story-caching” application that allows users to visit and learn more about various historic events and landmarks in Georgia as part of sesquicentennial of the Atlanta and Savannah Campaigns of 1864 and the semicentennial of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Once installed on a GPS-enabled smartphone or tablet, the application guides users to a site with a “story-cache”–a streaming multimedia presentation that “projects” the past onto the present location. Atlanta high-rises yield to Civil War trenches; Martin Luther King, Jr. is suddenly standing and speaking just where he once did, giving users the illusion of being transported back in time to become a member of his audience. Content is activated simply by being in the right place and pointing your smart device at a particular sign or statue or object.  This project is developed by ARwerks, an augmented reality design and production company (their web site isn’t fully operational, so they remain a bit mysterious).