Tag Archives: Historic House Museum Consortium of Washington

Want to Sharpen Your Historic Site Management Skills?

If you manage an historic site or house museum, there are several ways to sharpen your skills in the next few months.

Historic House Museum workshop at the Haas-Lilienthal House in San Francisco, 2014.

Historic House Museum workshop at the Haas-Lilienthal House in San Francisco, 2014.

For nearly fifteen years, the American Association for State and Local History has offered a two-day workshop on historic house museum issues and operations and next month it will be in Charleston, South Carolina on February 26-27, 2015.  Held in partnership with the Historic Charleston Foundation (one of the oldest historic preservation organizations in the US) and co-taught by me and Dr. George McDaniel of Drayton Hall, we’ll examine a wide range of topics from the unique perspective of house museums and historic sites, including leadership, interpretation, disaster preparedness, membership, and audience, through interactive presentations, group discussions, and site-specific exercises.  You’ll leave with a better sense of how your organization can better fulfill its mission and be more financially sustainable.  Registration is $345, $270 for AASLH members, plus there’s a $40 discount if you register by January 22.  Be sure to add a day to explore the historic sites in Charleston–it’s one of the best places to see a wide variety of visitor experiences in one place.

New this year is “Re-inventing the Historic House Museum,” a one-day workshop offering current thinking, practical information, and solutions to the challenges facing historic sites. The historic house museum in America is not dead nor are most of them dying. The field, however, needs to reflect and renew as the world around our historic sites continues to change.  This workshop was inspired by a sold-out symposium presented by the Historic House Museum Consortium of Washington, DC at Gunston Hall in March 2014, and now has been taken nationally to various regions by the American Association for State and Local History.  Ken Turino of Historic New England and I will be giving the core presentations and the others will vary to take advantage of the workshop location.  We’ll be at Strawbery Banke in New Hampshire on April 21, 2015 and the Margaret Mitchell House in Georgia on June 12, 2015.  Registration is $170; $95 for members of AASLH and NEMA (for April 21).

Recap of Historic House Museum Symposium at Gunston Hall

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On Saturday, the Historic House Museum Consortium of Washington DC hosted an all-day symposium on “how are historic house museums adapting to the future?” at Gunston Hall in Virginia.  The sold-out symposium featured three speakers, a tour of Gunston Hall, and lots of time to chat with colleagues during breaks and over lunch.   The cost?  A mere $15, truly a bargain.  The symposium not only attracted professionals from Virginia, Maryland, and DC, but as far away as Connecticut!

I opened the symposium by discussing Michael Porter’s “Five Forces” as a way of identifying opportunities and threats to help historic sites prepare and adapt.  If you’re not familiar with the Five Forces, it’s a framework for identifying those issues that have the biggest impact on your operations.  This is a much more useful alternative to SWOT, which may be a good outline for summarizing an analysis, but it’s not a helpful way to analyze a situation.  If you’d like to get an introduction to the Five Forces and how it applies to historic sites, take look at my presentation (warning: it’s an 18 Mb pdf).  Even better was the discussion that followed, which explored a wide range of ideas from the growing role of photography to changing demographics to the interpretation of African American history.

Jana Shafogoj at Morven Park discussed how the current emphasis on STEM has allowed their site to Continue reading →

Are Historic House Museums Adapting for the Future?

Gunston Hall, Lorton, Virginia.

Gunston Hall, Lorton, Virginia.

In March, the Historic House Museum Consortium of Washington, DC will be examining how historic house museums are adapting to the future at its annual Historic House Museum Symposium.  Presented alongside the 2014 Virginia Association of Museums conference, the symposium will feature three speakers, a boxed lunch, and a special tour of Gunston Hall on Saturday, March 15, 2014 from 9 am to 3 pm at George Mason’s Gunston Hall in Lorton, Virginia.  Registration is limited and is $15 per person.

Speakers include Continue reading →

DC Historic House Museums host Biennial Symposium

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Working in historic house museums often can often seem like an isolated job but not in the nation’s capital, where there is the Historic House Museum Consortium of Washington, DC, an active association of forty sites that mutually support and promote each other.  Every two years they also host a half-day symposium that attracts about one hundred museum guides, docents, and interpreters.  This year it was held on September 17 at the impressive George Washington Masonic Memorial in Alexandria, Virginia and I joined Dr. George McDaniel of Drayton Hall and Rebecca Martin of the National Archives to talk about various aspects of tours and the visitor experience:

  • George laid out that the visitor experience is much more than the tour and extends to the visitors’ planning, arrival, and departure. He emphasized the importance of little things, such as the directional signage, staff hospitality, and the condition of grounds and restrooms can have on visitors’ attitudes even before the tour starts
  • In “Before You Get Engaged:  Advice for Lovers of History and Historic Sites,” a light-hearted perspective on visitor engagement, I discussed three issues to consider before getting engaged with visitors:  don’t marry a stranger (know your audience), don’t share everything you know about a site on a tour (keep it mysterious), and let them know what you care about (keep your passion alive).
  • Becky closed the session with Continue reading →