The Reimagining the Historic House Museum workshop at the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio in June 2023.
“Reimagining the Historic House Museum,” the one-day workshop co-led by me and Ken Turino (Historic New England) will be held on Friday, April 19, 2024, from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm at Montpelier, a 1780s house museum in Laurel, Maryland (between DC and Baltimore). This workshop is part of the professional development series produced by AASLH. Registration is $325 but it’s $200 for AASLH members (and you receive an additional $50 discount if you register by March 22!). Participation is limited to 35 people.
Our workshop, while inspired by the book Reimagining Historic House Museums (2019), provides a more comprehensive hands-on exploration of house museums’ challenges. We assess current programs using a “double-bottom” line for a holistic view, analyze influencing forces to pinpoint opportunities and hurdles, and spotlight how house museums have successfully reinvented themselves. While the day is rich with information and activities, we ensure a well-deserved lunch break and networking time. You’ll leave with new tools and ideas to enhance your historic site and have an enjoyable experience.
Regular posts by me have been infrequent this year (and even last year!) due to an incredible amount of projects that have come across my desk, as well as travels here in the US and abroad.
Thankfully, Colin Gliniecki has helped with several posts on the financial condition of history organizations, which is part of a bigger personal project on strengthing the financial sustainability of historic sites and house museums. Colin received an MA in Museum Studies from George Washington University four years ago and with his undergraduate degree in business, I’ve relied on his extraordinary skills with Excel to analyze enormous sets of Form 990 data. (If anyone needs a museum data analyst, I’m happy to make an introduction.) We’ve finished the foundational series of posts around revenues and expenses and are now taking a step back to reflect on the work and determine next steps.
So next on the blog are more regular posts from me (weekly?), but they may take a variety of forms such as:
“reports from the field,” where I describe clever ideas from the museums and historic sites I encounter in my travels.
“reports from my garden,” describing what’s happening in my GW courses and commissioned projects.
books that are affecting my thinking about the management and interpretation of historic sites
personal projects (such as the Interpreting Christmas book)
I may be late to the game, but I believe video is the next big format that museums and historic sites need to embrace for interpretation and promotion. I’ve been testing the waters with a few videos, being pushed into the deep end by the pandemic when teaching went online:
The challenge is that video production is sloooooow but I’m determined to master it–and the only way to do it is by doing a lot of it. I’ve produced three in 2020, seven in 2023, so I definitely need to ramp up. Warning: the videos will be rough and drafty this year, so I’ll appreciate comments and suggestions!
In the world of small museums, location and audience significantly influence expenses, rendering a one-size-fits-all approach ineffective. However, gaining insight into the various types of expenses museums incur can shed light on common challenges and their causes. The non-profit financial Form 990 categorizes expenses into five areas, providing a framework for understanding spending patterns. Our goal is to simplify the concept of museum spending and guide museums toward prudent budget management by exploring these key expense categories.
It’s been several years since I attended an AASLH annual meeting due to the pandemic and conflicts with my teaching schedule, but I plan to be in Mobile, Alabama in September 2024 (I’m hoping to see the Clotilda–National Geographic called it the best museum that opened in 2023!). Professional conferences are one of the best ways to mentally stand above your daily work and compare what you’re doing with the rest of the field. You can compare experiences, solve problems, share solutions, and be inspired. Plus I can share meals with some of my colleagues (and meet new ones!).
I’ll not only be attending but hope to lead a session or two to support the good work happening at history organizations around the country. It’s a terrific way to work with others to address a hot topic, provide different perspectives on a common issue, and yes, shape the future of the field–so I hope you’ll join me in proposing a session to support your colleagues.
AASLH has moved beyond the traditional three-panelists-and-a-moderator format to include roundtable discussions, in-depth workshops, debates, and a series of quick presentations to allow more variety, so if you have an idea for an educational session, there’s probably an interesting way to present it. I’m having a hard time choosing!
Like most conferences, a committee reviews proposals to assemble the program. Because this is a national conference, they’re looking for sessions that address issues that are affecting history organizations nationally, offer a national perspective on a topic through a geographically diverse session, or relate to the conference theme. Avoid “show and tell” sessions about a program or event that’s unique to your organization and can’t be easily duplicated by others (plus they tend to be really boring self-congratulatory panels). Finally, the attendees want results to justify the time and money they’ve spent at the conference. What will they learn? It’s got to be more than “understand” and “appreciate”–that’s far too vague. By the end of the session, what will they specifically know, what will they be able to do, and how will they feel (e.g., more confident, less confused)?
AASLH is accepting proposals until December 20, 2023. Because proposals are prepared online, it may be difficult to know what information they are seeking, so I’ve attached a one-page summary of the core questions to answer.
Students assessing mission statements in a museum management course at George Washington University, fall 2022.
Today I’m teaching my third class of the semester on museum management and we are discussing mission, vision, and values. I assign each student a museum as their case study for the topics we explore through the course, which is brought together in an organizational assessment based on MAP as the final project.
Because mission, vision, and values are the foundations for managerial decision-making in non-profit organizations, they are a good place to start the semester because it will affect their thinking throughout the course. As part of our readings, we draw from chapters in Reinventing the Museum: The Evolving Conversation on the Paradigm Shift, Second Edition edited by Gail Anderson; What Management Is by Joan Magretta; Mission Matters: Relevance and Museums in the 21st Century by Gail Anderson; and the AAM’s Standards. Erin Carlson Mast, president and CEO of the Lincoln Presidential Foundation, joined us last week to discuss how the Foundation and President Lincoln’s Cottage developed their mission statements and how they affected their thinking.
In the colorful tapestry of history-focused organizations, every thread of revenue has a role to play in the success of the organization. Perhaps the most unique collection of these threads is the “Other” revenue category. This singular “Other” thread houses a miscellany of revenue sources that don’t fit into the categories of “Investment Income”, “Program Service Revenue”, and “Contributions and Grants”. At first glance, this classification may appear insignificant, yet it often proves to be a silent contributor that underpins the fiscal health of History-Focused Organizations [Museums (NTEE A50), History Museums (A54), History Organizations (A80), and Historical Societies & Historic Preservation (A82)].
Understanding this “Other” revenue can be like deciphering an ancient dialect. It is made no easier by the fact that IRS Form 990 at times uses the terms revenue and income interchangeably. While some categories of this revenue such as royalties and inventory sales may be familiar, “miscellaneous” often contains difficult to parse odds and ends such as third-party events, insurance proceeds, ATM fees, and revenue from hosting satellite towers. Most often this miscellaneous revenue is unspecified and simply named “miscellaneous” or “other” which can make it difficult to get the full picture of a particular institution’s revenue sources. We advise limiting the classification of your total revenue as “miscellaneous” to no more than 1%. While judicious use of this category can help define your other revenue streams more clearly, overuse could lead to a lack of clarity about a significant portion of your revenue. It is crucial to maintain a comprehensive understanding of your financial situation.
This small selection of historic sites operated by The National Society of The Colonial Dames reveals the enormous diversity of house museums and historic sites in the United States.
In 2007, I helped organize the Forum on Historic Site Stewardship in the 21st Century, which resulted in an influential issue of Forum Journal that laid out the major challenges and opportunities, including the need for financial sustainability, a willingness to change in response to the needs of the community, and a balance between the needs of buildings, landscapes, collections, and the visiting public. It also recognized that museum standards may not be the best practices for historic sites and that the profession “must develop new measures, beyond attendance, that document the quality of visitor engagement at sites and the extent of community outreach beyond the bounds of historic sites.”
So what has happened in the 16 years that followed? We’ll find out this week as the American Association for State and Local History hosts a virtual summit on the Sustainability, Relevance, and the Future of Historic House Museums on July 11-12. Sessions will address measuring the impact of house museums, broadening interpretation, care of buildings and landscapes, and the evolution of mission statements.
For small non-profit organizations operating on less than a million dollars annually, programs are often the beating heart of the operation. The best programs balance mission and financial sustainability to serve their audiences. Program revenue (admissions, events, and membership dues) can be a vital means of maintaining financial stability and growth. For History-Focused Organizations [Museums (NTEE A50), History Museums (A54), History Organizations (A80), and Historical Societies & Historic Preservation (A82)] as overall revenue grows, so does the share of program revenue. This means as your organization grows, so should the prominence of your programs as a true revenue driver (see figure 1 below).
As small history-focused organizations expand, it’s crucial to manage their programs wisely to increase income while keeping the mission in mind. For small groups, program decisions can be very personal, often influenced by board or staff interests. Taking a strategic approach to these decisions can boost the organization’s growth and success.
Scholars reviewing the archives at the Haas-Lilienthal House.
The National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal granting agency, recently announced a special grant program to support interpretive planning at small organizations for up to $25,000, no match required.
What does “small” mean? You need to meet at least two of the following:
Annual operating expenses of less than $1,000,000
Located in a community with less than 300,000 residents
A staff of less than 50 people
Rely primarily on volunteers or part-time staff.
A mission to interpret under-told stories or serving a non-traditional audience
Hmm…that describes most history organizations in the US, so if you’re reading this post, you’re probably eligible.
Now, what will it support? Nearly anything that improves or enhances the interpretation of your collection, site, or community, such as:
help you think creatively about the hidden strengths of your collections or historic site
generate new ideas for engaging with the community
train staff and volunteers on interpretive methods and techniques
develop a framework for developing public programs
creating interpretive plans for exhibitions, tours, or school programs
visiting other historic sites or museums to sharpen skills and knowledge
evaluating existing tours or exhibitions
testing new programs for their ability to engage new audiences
conducting historical research to support new interpretive themes
Projects must include at least one scholar from a humanities discipline (e.g., history) or one consultant specializing in interpretation to the public (Engaging Places can help you with this), as well as at least one expert on your local community.
Applications are due June 28, 2023 for one to two year projects beginning between March 1 and May 1, 2024. You will need all of that time to prepare an application and NEH will read draft applications submitted by May 24. Remember to register in advance with the System for Award Management (SAM) and Grants.gov—those are steps you cannot do at the last minute.
Join Conny Graft and Max van Balgooy on May 24 at 3:00 pm Eastern for a ninety-minute webinar on interpretive planning as we prepare for the U.S. 250th anniversary in 2026. To help you feel more confident in this specialized topic, we will discuss the basic process of interpretive planning, provide a simple rubric to develop goals, and distinguish topics and themes (and why themes are more valuable). As a bonus, we’ll briefly mention ways to identify target audiences and expand your thinking about methods and formats. Registration is $20; $10 for AASLH members.
It’s the start of a three-part series on interpreting the 250th at historic sites and house museums. Other sessions will dive into the field-wide themes for the 250th with Ashley Jordan (African American Museum in Philadelphia) and Steve Murray (Alabama Department of Archives and History) and offer an interactive platform to workshop ideas with fellow practitioners with Sarah Pharaon (Dialogic Consulting). Whether you have a clear tie to the Revolution or not, this webinar series will help you make history relevant and captivating for your audience. Attend all three webinars for $55; $25 for AASLH members.
Engaging Places 