Building Membership Relies on Research

Curate Your Own Membership at the Whitney Museum of American Art

Curate Your Own Membership at the Whitney Museum of American Art

The November/December 2013 issue of Museum, the magazine of the American Alliance of Museums, includes two helpful articles on membership, which is typically the fundamental fundraising program for historic sites.

In “Join the Club,” Daniel Grant describes several museums that have successfully broken the traditional “give more/get more” membership structure.  The Whitney Museum of American Art nows offers a Curate Your Own Membership program, which includes Continue reading →

Celebrating the New Year by Looking Back

Freedom's Eve at President Lincoln's Cottage

Freedom’s Eve at President Lincoln’s Cottage

President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, DC is hosting a New Year’s Eve party with meaning by marking the “stroke of midnight, January 1, 1863” when “thousands of men, women, and children celebrated as the Emancipation Proclamation finally took effect.”  Tickets are $150 to $250 per person, with a special discount for persons under 40 years old.  Although the staff will be working on a holiday, it’s a clever way to connect history and support a good cause, too.  What popular events in your community can be connected to your site’s history or mission?

AAM and NAI Announce Awards, but Few are Historic Sites

Walking Cinema of Gloucester HarborWalk

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

AASLH website 2013The 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.

Amazon.com May Help Your Fundraising Efforts

AmazonSmile customer start-up page.

AmazonSmile customer start-up page.

This holiday season, Amazon.com is mixing business with charity in its newest project, AmazonSmile.  By shopping at smile.amazon.com instead of plain old amazon.com, 0.5 percent of the value of their purchases will be donated to the customer’s preferred charity (i.e., a $100 purchase becomes a 50 cent donation).  When first visiting AmazonSmile, customers are prompted to select a charitable organization from almost one million eligible organizations.   What’s even more amazing is that there seems to be no limit to the amount Amazon will give to charity, although as of now auto-renewed subscription purchases and digital products aren’t included.  Donations will be made by the AmazonSmile Foundation, so customers using AmazonSmile will not be able to claim donations as charitable deductions.

Charitable organizations can register for free to receive donations at Continue reading →

Video: History Matters. Students Matter.

http://vimeo.com/76743251

Angela Smith, assistant professor and director of the public history program at North Dakota State University shares this six minute general overview of the value of history and how the Public History Program at NDSU has contributed through several student projects.  This video was presented at the College Honors Day on October 11, 2013.

Video: History of Halloween

http://vimeo.com/29761053

National Geographic Channel presents its history of Halloween in this 3:12 video.  It’s a bit dramatic but well produced.  As an alternative, you can buy the “Ghosts of History” video to project ghostly images of people in “colonial clothing” on a scrim.  I’m not sure the colonial period was the scariest for America–how about the attack on Pearl Harbor or the Cuban Missile Crisis?

http://vimeo.com/64471866

Historic House Museum Sustainability at MAAM

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It’s unclear if most historic house museums will be able to move beyond traditional approaches based upon the discussion at yesterday’s, “There is Power In a Union: Collaboration and Sustainability in Historic House Museums.” At the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums annual meeting, Frank Vagnone of the New York Historic House Trust moderated the session with a panel of five representatives of the National Trust’s Historic Artists’ Home and Studios program and about 35 people in attendance.  Although Vagnone encouraged the group to focus on collaborations that earned significant income to sustain the museum, examples from the audience kept falling short.  Anything that provided some revenue (such as school groups or small grants) or increased attendance (even if it was shortlived or unrelated) were held up as acceptable partnerships.  The audience discussed the value of serving school groups, the need to use social media, the declining relevance of museums, and the challenge of obtaining grants from local banks, but no one was Continue reading →

Video: Baltimore: A History, Block by Block

James Singewald, is photographing and researching ten historic streets in Baltimore for his project, Baltimore: A History Block by Block.   This 4:30 video explains his project and presents a series of his photographs that show the rich variety of architecture that survives (and may be soon demolished) and is raising funds for 4×5 film, processing, research, and publication on Kickstarter.   It’s a great way to raise funds to research and document historic neighborhoods, and he’d appreciate your support with a gift of $10 or more (he’s raised nearly half of his expenses with 65 backers).  Singewald received his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art abd is currently the imaging services technician at the Maryland Historical Society>  He funded his previous book, Old Town, East Baltimore, in 2010 through Kickstarter.