Category Archives: Technology

Can the Exploratorium Help Us Explore History?

Last week I visited the Exploratorium in its new home on Pier 15 in San Francisco. If you haven’t veen there, it’ll seem like a science center but you’ll quickly discover it’s really a place about learning, especially through direct experiences with art, tinkering, and phenomena (yep, that’s how they describe it). It’s an incredibly active place (almost to the point of overwhelming) that seems to effectively engage its visitors, so I continually watch to see if any of their exhibits or ideas can be applied to historic sites or history museums. During my latest visit, I found two exhibits that with a mild tweak could be really be innovative for interpreting history.

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1. Question Bridge: Black Males. This temporary exhibit is, “comprised of many individuals asking and answering questions about the experience of black men in modern America.” Inside the small dark room are Continue reading →

Video: Luminous Hall

The Centenary of the University of Western Australia was celebrated with “Luminous Hall” on February 8, 2013, a 20-minute performance created by Illuminart. Luminous Hall is a “narrative architectural projection” on the exterior of the historic Winthrop Hall that combines mapped projection with music, stories, and drama interpreting the history of the university and local community. Moving beyond son et lumier, the form engages the viewer in history in an extraordinary way. Other examples using Norwood Town Hall and a Night Mural Picnic are available.

Video: The Leopold Museum

A hip video by Philipp Kaindl promoting the Leopold Museum in Vienna, which houses the world’s largest collection of paintings by Egon Schiele. The video is not just about the collections but also the activities and people in and around the museum and told without any words. Can any of these ideas be applied to historic sites or history museums?

Exploring History and Historic Sites in Monterey in March 2014

Historic downtown Monterey with the Cooper-Molera Adobe in the background.

The National Council on Public History will hold its annual conference in Monterey, California from March 19-22, 2014. It will be the first time I’ve attended a NCPH conference and I’m thrilled–the schedule is packed with a variety of sessions that will appeal to those who are working on the cutting edge of historic sites and house museums, including:

Educational sessions on co-created exhibits, tribal partnerships, preserving LGBT sites, interpreting slavery, the history of museums, stewardship of archaeological sites, cultural landscapes, and the sustainability of museums.
“THATCamp NCPH” is an afternoon learning laboratory on digital projects that Continue reading →

Cleaning Out My Cabinet of Curious Stories

Like all good museologists, I have a small cabinet of curiosities where I collect things of wonder, inspiration, and imagination. Mine is virtual and sits in Evernote. It’s time for a year-end clean-up, so here are a few that didn’t develop into full blog posts but even in their unrefined state, seem sufficiently interesting to share:

Google is continually looking for ways to get information to us as quickly and easily as possible. The last couple years it’s been creating quick descriptions of places using five keywords–but I’m not sure how they’re derived. A recent search for “historical society near Maryland” in Google Maps associated the American Historical Association with “symbol” and the Historical Society of Washington DC with “celebrities.” Who doesn’t like attention like that? The most surprising, though, is the description of the DAR National Headquarters with Continue reading →

AAM and NAI Announce Awards, but Few are Historic Sites

Walking Cinema of Gloucester HarborWalk

The American Alliance of Museums and the National Association for Interpretation announced their annual winners in various categories, from label writing to exhibits to publications to programs. You’ll want to look at the entire list for inspiration, but I especially want to congratulate those people and organizations whose worked focused on historic sites, houses, and places (that’s the point of this blog).

The Media and Technology Professional Network of AAM presented Muse Awards for digital media to: Continue reading →

AASLH Refreshes its Website

The American Association for State and Local History refreshed its website at aaslh.org, launching a significantly improved and enhanced version that’s rich with color and photos, along with continually updated news, blog posts, and tweets laid out in a magazine format. You’ll need to explore the various pages to discover the new features and content, but I especially like News and Views to quickly soak up what’s happening and the Learn and Search Interests pages, where you can browse popular topics with just a click of a mouse, such as “administration” or “funding.” There’s also a Your Feed page that allows you choose from a menu of topics that interest you, such as “best practices” or “historic houses” and viola! you get a special page created just for you.

As a member of the AASLH Council, I officially receive the credit for the new website, but it actually belongs to the AASLH staff, particularly Rebecca Price, Bob Beatty, and Terry Jackson. This new website has been a longtime in coming, but it was worth the wait.

PS. If the new website comes up broken, as it did for me at first, just refresh your browser to clear its memory of the old website.

Video: Refuse to Fold: Heritage Tourism in the Mississippi Delta

This 35-minute video is the first cut of a working documentary by Brian Dempsey and Angela Smith about heritage tourism and the Mississippi Delta Blues, featuring Jimmy “Duck” Holmes from Bentonia, Mississippi. Dempsey and Smith were PhD students in public history at Middle Tennessee State University four years ago when they produced this video.