Directing Dumbarton

Attingham 2010: Atmospheric Pressure

2010-07-13T18:50:00.004-04:00

So today was a quite interesting visit to Hardwick Hall, a 1590s retreat for the Countous Elizabeth Shroesbury while estranged from her forth husband, the Earl of Shroesbury. This was an interesting site with some of the best textiles in the world, including 16th century tapestries and embroideries; it also had something more -- atmospheric pressures.

The National Trust, the owner of Hardwick Hall, started in recent years an interpretive program of atmospheric design. What I mean by this is incorporating as many of the fie senses into the visit as possible. Such examples would be musi playing in the background that was relevant, touch objects where appropriate and understood, and different smells including such examples as those of cigars or coal and wood burning fireplaces. But, this also introduces time specific interpretations as in morning, afternoon, evening, or night.

The National Trust has had mixed results with this atmospheric interpretation program and it seems they may have had a heavy hand in initiating the program. As for Hardwick Hall, it did not really work, but I think this could work for the right place quite well. The key is to interpret a specific day and time. Do a lighting survey to figure out exactly where candles would have been places, if candles are appropriate for your time period. Don't have the smell of a fire if the day being interpreted is in the middle of the summer, and such other points.

Overall, I do think such a program can work quite well, but only for the right place. I am sure there are others who think otherwise. I see it as a way of doing first person interpretations without the person. Can you think of how it may work at Dumbarton House, or maybe Dumbarton house would not be a good fit - any suggestions?

Attingham 2010: A Tale of Two Interpretations

2010-07-09T13:35:00.003-04:00

A study in how to handle a fire -- visits to Uppark and Cowdray Castle. Actually, it was not so much on how to handle a fire as how to interpret a place after a fire or diseaster occurs. Uppark country house burned in a fierce fire in 1989, and today there are but only a very few remnants of the fire that remain. The house was rebuilt to the day before the fire, including all the interiors and the collections. While all but at most a dozen of the pieces on the first floor were saved, those not saved were recreated to an exactness of the originals. Here is the question of debate; the pieces that were recreated completely or more than a significant percentage, should they continue to be seen as period pieces? Four busts sitting in niches in the dining room are completely recreated, and yet they were presented to the group as being from 1802-5.

Before coming back to the thought, I want to also share Cowdray Castle. Cowdray burned in 1793 and is currently presented as an architectural ruin. This was a massive Tudor castle with a center courtyard. After being studied and stabilized to prevvent any walls from falling, in the past decade it was opened for tourists to visit. In general, nearly nothing was recreated and that which was was openly discussed.

So, whicch interpretation is better? For whom? Should Cowdray have been returned to its original glory, or possibly should Uppark have been turned into a ruin? Please view pictures of both places on my previous blog entry and share your thoughts.

Attingham 2010: Week One Site Review - Part 1

2010-07-08T18:59:00.011-04:00

I wrote a second installment the other day pertaining to Attingham 2010, but it would not copy and paste into the blog template. When I am a bit more energetic, I will re-write it for some thought provoking discussion I hope. In the mean while, please enjoy some of my pictures from the past week.

The first two pictures are both of West Dean Park (West Dean College). Originally built around 1650, West Dean Park became what it is today more between the years of 1804 and 1830. Architect James Wyatt, father of the famed Benjamin Wyatt is responsible for the design. While West Dean once was an Elizabethan house, it was largely rebuilt around 1622 and so few parts, if any, of the original house even exist today.

While using West Dean as our home, the Attingham class of 2010 visited such places as Uppark in Sussex and Cowdray Park in West Sussex. Both of these properties had major fires in their lives, one, Uppark was completely rebuild to the way it looked the day before the fire in 1989. Cowdray on the other hand burned in 1793 and was neer rebuilt, instead presented as a ruin. These are the two houses that my original second writing was to be about (to be posted at a later date).

I do hope it is obvious as to which desided to rebuild and which did not! Uppark, like West Dean, was originally built as a small place in the Elizabethan era. In the second half of the 17th century it was greatly enlarged by Lord Grey of Werke. Ahortly there after, in the middle of the 18th century, Sir Matthew Featherstonhaugh re-created the house much to the form seen today.

Cowdray was a bit older house, first built as a castle during the Tudor Period. This too, like so many others, was demolished and a new structure was built principally on the original foundation in the 1520s. In 1591, then owner 1st Viscount Montague wrote Book of Rules and Orders which pertained to life at Cowdray and provides much of the information now know about the structure.

I will continue brief day-by-day, in a multi-day format such as this, write-ups for the next few days. Please do share any comments or thoughts you may have.

Welcome from the Attingham Summer School: Day 1

2010-07-02T20:20:00.001-04:00

Greetings from England. I want to start by introducing myself as the Museum Curator at Dumbarton House and explain the Attingham Summer School. Earlier this spring I was fortunate to be selected for the Attingham Summer School, a program in which scholars, curators, gardeners, architects, conservators, and leaders in the museum and complimentary fields are brought together each year in England for three weeks to study the Country House, it's gardens, owners, collections, and architecture, as well as issues and concerns of the past and the present that these houses need to deal with today, tomorrow, and in the future. We also learn about what worked in the past and what did not.

With an introductory tour and recception yesterday, July 1, at Apsley House and the V&A in London, we headed off today for West Dean College. Of course the customary tea greeted our group upon arrival and the 23 Americans and 26 non-Americans (participants from around Europe, as well as India, Australia, and New Zealand) started to prepare for what will be three weeks of intensive study and learning in the serenity of sheep filled pastures and 18th-century coutry houses.

I am sitting here by my window tonight thinking about the lecture that finished justed a few hours ago - Who Owns the Country House? by Jeremy Musson. While America is not thought of all to often as having the same granduer of country houses, they did and do exist. The first location for them that comes to my mind is Newport, then of course Nantucket and the Hudson River Valley to name just a few. But while several entities own the houses here in England, who owns them in America? I do understand that the dating is a bit different, by a century or two (sometimes even three), but in England, as Musson discussed, there are five main owners: private, institutional, local government, English Heritage, and the National Trust.

Lets look at this in another way that relates a little more to Dumbarton House; who owns the historic house or historic house museum in America? I think this is a better comparison than the country houses in America, even though it is not necessarily a direct one. Dumbarton House and Lyndhurst, just to name two, are both owned by private non-profits (The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America and The National Trust for Historic Preservation, respectively), while other places like the Clara Barton National Historic Site (Clara Barton House) is owned by the National Park Service. In Chicago, the Nickerson Mansion is privately owned, yet open to the public, and an example of institutional ownership would be The Highlands owned by Sidwell Friends School (originally owned by the Nourse family).

Once Musson's lecture is really comtemplated, the country house in England and the historic house in America are not that much different. Yes, maybe the sizes are not so relative, nor the original owners, but in the present time, many issues that are to be discussed in the Attingham Summer School will have comparable similarities to the 8,000 to 15,000 historic house museums in the United States, not to mention the historic houses that have been saved, or issued a new, second life as something else. (numerical resource: Pew Charitable Trust)

As I leave you this evening, the rain is coming down and the sheep are calling just outside my window. Please think about who owns the historic house museum in America and how does this effect the successes and failures of the houses and their property?

Reach Advisors Survey Points to Visitor Preferences

2010-05-25T15:24:00.002-04:00

Our recent roundtable conversations have frequently touched on the "delivery method" historic house museums have typically used to present their collections & interpretation to their visitors--the guided tour.

A recent survey by Reach Advisors of over 40,000 core museum visitors contains some surprising data about visitor preferences--and they're lack of preference for guided tours, even in historic sites. To read more about their findings, and some of the dialogue it's spurring online, visit: Reach Advisors Survey

I'll post some of my thoughts about these findings, and about yesterday's Roundtable discussion, in the days ahead. In the meantime, I welcome your comments about the Reach Advisors survey or guided tours in general!

First Person Interpretation: Why Does it Make Me So Nervous?

2010-05-13T20:07:00.004-04:00

For as long as I can remember I have enjoyed throwing myself into the middle of the action.

At Disney MGM Studios with my family, I was the overly-enthusiastic kid in the audience, hand thrust into the air as soon as a volunteer was requested, smiling broadly on stage as I assisted with the presentation on creating sound effects in movies.

At sites like Colonial Williamsburg, I got a kick out of marching around behind the costumed interpreters by the armory and asking the blacksmith a million questions about his craft.

So, I wasn’t at all surprised when I read the following finding of the Colonial Williamsburg visitor study profiled by Conny Graft in her 2007 article, “Listen, Evaluate, Respond!”:

“First, guests wanted more interactive and engaging experiences…Guests wanted to see more costumed people mingle in and out of original and restored buildings. In fact, they wanted us to flood the streets with hundreds of costumed people twenty-four hours a day!"

Personally, I can totally relate to the visitors’ desire to immerse themselves in the past evoked at Colonial Williamsburg. So then why do I professionally look down my nose at the idea of costumed, first-person interpreters at "my" historic site?

In our March Roundtable we spent a lot of time on this very question and came to what may be at the heart of the conflict:

As a visitor, what we’re looking for in first person interpretation is largely ambiance--a reinforcement of the period so that we can feel transported to the past and perhaps reminded that it was a very real place inhabited by real folks just like you and me.

As a history museum professional, however, what we’re looking for in first person interpretation is high quality historical authenticity. We take great pains to ensure our volunteer docents (giving third person tours) share accurate accounts of the past; and that they understand our period and our house and our collection deeply enough to avoid broad historical generalizations of “the olden days.”

That authenticity is what scares me so much about first person interpretation. How far do we take it? Clearly the costume should be authentic, but what about the shoes? Or the hair? Or the makeup? What about the accents of Americans living in Georgetown in 1810 or appropriate 19th century vocabulary?

If done “wrong”, could first person interpretation send visitors away with a total misunderstanding of the period of the past we are trying to represent? Or would first person interpretation provide a charming, engaging interaction with the past to visitors who never asked us for a history lesson anyway?

I, for one, am still not ready to convert our institution to a living history museum…but I will think twice about the possibilities for first person interpretation at "my" site in the future.

Does Size Matter for Effective Visitor Evaluation?

2010-05-04T19:59:00.000-04:00

Those of you who know me, know that I have a soft spot in my heart for Colonial Williamsburg due to my fabulous four years as an undergraduate at the College of William and Mary. And in my last post you may have read my kudos to CW for providing a model of visitor evaluation from which all of us in the historic site field could learn.

But, I’m left to wonder how those of us at smaller institutions can realistically undertake similar evaluation projects. The visitor study discussed in Conny Graft’s 2007 article, “Listen, Evaluate, Respond!” included ten-months of in-home interviews, guest journaling, employee surveys, literature reviews, and e-mail satisfaction surveys. Meanwhile, here at Dumbarton House, our passionate, experienced, and overworked 8-person full-time staff struggles to find the time to routinely collate and analyze simple comment cards. If it’s difficult for us to consistently gather visitor feedback, I can only imagine how daunting the prospect must be to institutions with even fewer paid staff.

I had the opportunity to participate in a workshop on visitor evaluation led by Graft in November at AASLH’s intensive professional development program, the Seminar for Historical Administration. At that workshop, Graft stressed that visitor studies could be undertaken at institutions of any size and any budget. While I left the workshop energized, I’ve emerged from 5 months back in the trenches a bit skeptical.

Though skeptical, I’m also more convinced than ever that evaluation is critical to our success as an institution. So, I’m seeking out other models--sites that have undergone meaningful visitor studies and worked to successfully integrate evaluation into their practice, without the benefit of a professional evaluator on staff.

In the meantime, Dumbarton House is moving forward and learning along the way, with our education and marketing staff conducting online surveys of visitors and community members as part of our interpretive planning process. Who knows? Maybe our own experience will prove useful to other small & medium sized historic institutions looking for a realistic way to gather visitor feedback with limited staffing and limited budgets.

Evaluating and Responding to Our Visitors

2010-04-27T09:49:00.001-04:00

For our March Roundtable, our group read Conny Graft’s 2007 History News article, “Listen, Evaluate, Respond! The Colonial Williamsburg Visitor Research Story.” Our conversation took some unpredicted turns, and hovered on the topics of relevancy and first person interpretation--both of which I’ll explore in greater depth in future blog posts. More generally, our group emerged impressed with Colonial Williamsburg’s strategic approach to visitor evaluation and curious to hear more about recent developments with their Revolutionary City program.

In deciding to undertake a comprehensive visitor study, an institution must first be willing to open itself up to criticism and then be willing to actually consider that visitor input when making future decisions. While I consider myself to be a strong advocate for visitor study and evaluation, I can certainly understand the very real hesitation some of us may feel before undertaking such a project. It’s never easy to hear from people that what you’re doing might not be having its intended effect and it’s even harder to hand over some level of control for future programming decisions to the visitors themselves.

I commend Colonial Williamsburg for facing those fears head on, and for then using that feedback to fundamentally alter their visitor experience. And I’d love to hear about how it’s going for them currently--in terms of visitation, visitor satisfaction, and new program development. So if you know of any recent articles, blog posts, or reports on CW, please pass them along.

In the end, I believe this kind of evaluation--and the self reflection that must follow--strengthens our institutions, ensuring that we can continue to preserve history for future generations to come.

Creating & Leveraging Museum Advocates

2010-03-06T09:28:00.003-05:00

The concept of “museum advocates” really stood out for me while reviewing the Museums and Society 2034 study in advance of our February Roundtable discussion. The idea of a segment of the population--a subset of those who visit our sites--who value museums as truly vital parts of their lives and the lives of their communities, makes complete sense to me. While there may be many casual museum-goers, there is a far smaller group of folks out there who will really advocate on behalf of museums.

The challenge for those of us working in the museum field, the report suggests, is two-fold: first, to create as many museum advocates as possible and then to leverage those advocates to ensure our institutions remain well-supported for generations to come.

So how do we face these two challenges head on?

Creating museum advocates seems to be the simpler of the two. Since the author reports that nearly all advocates “have a distinct memory of a specific, seminal museum experience, usually between the ages of 5 and 9,” the key rests on our ability to create those experiences for as broad a range of 5-9 year-olds as possible. Luckily, museums have largely proven their ability to program effectively for children--with the bulk of museum youth and family programs focused on elementary-school-aged students.

Leveraging those museum advocates, after they’re hooked on museums, seems more challenging to me. I attend community meetings here in Georgetown on behalf of Dumbarton House, and we try to maintain strong relationships with a variety of community groups. We participate in neighborhood events and offer our space as a venue when appropriate, but I constantly wonder if there isn’t more we could be doing. How do we ensure that our community believes we’re not just “nice to have” in the neighborhood, but absolutely necessary.

If we want to remain truly vital, then it seems to me that our paid and volunteer staff can’t be the only ones proclaiming the value of our historic site. To be successful, and sustainable, we need respected community members to make the case on our behalf as well.

So, I, too, would love to hear from our blog readers. What are you doing to recruit the museum advocates in your community to support your institution? Have you seen any great examples at other institutions? How can we as a field better leverage those museum advocates we hooked as 5-9 year-olds, now that they’re adults?

Dear My First Museum - Thanks for Everything! - Love, Advocate

2010-03-04T17:26:00.001-05:00

If one of Dolley Madison's* necklaces had come unstrung, madly scattering pearls to each corner of our Belle Vue Room venue, those pearls would hardly have been able to compete with the many directions into which our last Director's Roundtable discussion sent conversation threads streaming! Our participants tore into the reading as enthusiastically as Dolley's dinner guests, steamed by partisanship and Washington's swampy summers, would have spooned into their oyster ice cream. The topic was "Demographic Trends in Museums," and the reading was a recent report by the Center for the Future of Museums, Museums and Society 2034: Trends and Potential Futures (AAM, 2008).

If the Museums and Society 2034 report presented a massive bucket of oysters that we tried to shuck as quickly as possible in our limited roundtable timeframe, one of the biggest pearls we found first was in the concept of "Museum Advocates," a group the report's authors identified based on surveys administered to 30,000 core museum visitors. As Page 6 of the report defines the group, "Museums are not just places that they visit on occasion, but are especially important places in their lives where they truly enjoy spending their leisure time. And what distinguishes Museum Advocates from other people? Nearly all have a distinct memory of a specific, seminal museum experience, usually between the ages of 5 and 9."

Moreover, given that the U.S. population is currently one-third minority (as defined within the article, non-white), and rapidly moving toward majority-minority, while core museum visitors are currently only 9% minority and museum employees only 20% minority, the report continues on to ask: "If 5 to 9 is the critical age for converting children into lifelong museumgoers and advocates, how can museums attract minority children in this age range whose support they want in 2034?"

Which brings us to our first discussion question, presented on a silver platter as graciously as if Dolley had served it up herself: Do YOU identify with this group of Museum Advocates? If so, describe your "seminal museum experience!" How and why did it make you an advocate? For instance, one of our extremely accomplished collections interns mentioned that once she had viewed the First Ladies (gowns) Collection exhibit at the Smithsonian, she was hooked for life! This seems like such a textbook example of the seminal museum experience - a trajectory that launches with a trip to a museum and ends up with a graduate-educated author, teacher, and museum professional in the history of fashion - that many of us were dying to learn more about it. Time did not permit discussion of this and other fascinating (and, I imagine, well-clad) journeys to museum advocacy, hence the inspiration for this online chat.

If you are not too busy advocating for museums at this very moment, I hope you all will share, whether or not you were able to attend the roundtable!

*P.S. I confess to having Dolley Madison on the brain, as Dolley is one of Dumbarton House's Very Important Visitors and the PBS "American Experience" documentary on Dolley premiered at the beginning of this week. (If you missed the episode, a fun and, I think, fair review of it appeared in The Washington Post - and there is always Netflix.)

Everyone's Thinking about the Future of Museums!

2010-03-01T16:28:00.003-05:00

After a rousing discussion of what museums will be like 25 years from now in our Roundtable last week, I was tickled to receive the following "invitation" in my email inbox from IMLS (the Institute for Museum & Library Services) today. Read on to learn about a new IMLS initiative to encourage dialogue about the future of museums & libraries.

I'm definitely signing up--and hope some of you will too!

*******
Dear Colleague,

Please join us in creating a resource to guide thinking about the future of libraries and museums! From March 3rd until May 12th, 2010, IMLS will be encouraging dialogue about the big challenges and opportunities facing libraries and museums through UpNext: The Future of Museums and Libraries Wiki. You are invited to participate in this collaborative space to share your voice and expertise.

The wiki will open for participation on March 3rd, but you can register as a wiki member in advance. (http://imlsupnext.wikispaces.com).

In these tough economic times, strategic thinking is a wise investment in the future. Whether you work in, partner with, study, volunteer, visit or are just plain interested in museums and libraries and passionate about how they can continue to thrive in their service to the public—you have an opinion to be shared!

The wiki will be an opportunity to share resources, examples of what works, and vexing questions. We hope that it will be a thought provoking ten weeks for all participants and provide food for thought for your career, your institution and the choices you face.

The Vision:
A collaborative resource based on The Future of Museums and Libraries: A Discussion Guide, (http://www.imls.gov/pdf/DiscussionGuide.pdf ) that is available and used by others across the museum and library fields to continue to stimulate discussion and share knowledge about planning, enhancing, enriching and sustaining the future of museums and libraries in the 21st century.

The Goals for this wiki:

Share ideas, resources and projects that help libraries and museums plan for the future and take action;
Encourage cross disciplinary conversation and engage experts as well as emerging professionals;
Use a 2.0 communications strategy to engage citizens in government;
Provide IMLS with input to consider for its strategic plan and to inform future IMLS research, publications, convening and grant making.

The wiki will be organized around four main content areas:

Discussion Themes. Each theme will have a unique page in the wiki describing the theme and the questions posed in the Discussion Guide. Expert discussion leaders will introduce two new themes every two weeks. The full schedule is below. Wiki users will be able to respond and comment on the questions, as well as pose new questions and thoughts particular to that theme.
Future Reading (an open bibliography). Wiki users will be able to post links and citations to publications and resources on issues relevant to the future of museums and libraries. This page will include the bibliography from the original publication as a starting point.
Present Practice (examples from the field). The examples from the field page will be a space for users to share existing projects at their own institutions or others, which are related to the discussion themes. They will be encouraged to include links to the project or institution website and contribute a brief description of the project.
In the Classroom. Finally, a unique page will exist for educators and students to share how the wiki, the Discussion guide and other resources on the future of museums and libraries are or can be used in the classroom. Users can share lesson plans, student reports and projects, and resources for emerging library and museum professionals.

Please join us in spreading the word about UpNext with your professional networks. We hope you will be an engaged and active participant with us in the wiki and will keep you informed of its progress as each theme unfolds.

March 3-16
1. Changing Definitions & Roles of Museums and Libraries
Martín Gómez, City Librarian, Los Angeles Public Library
2. Shifts in Power & Authority
Cassie Chin, Deputy Executive Director, Wing Luke Asian Museum

March 17-30
3. Museums & Libraries as the “Third Place”
Susan Hildreth, City Librarian, Seattle Public Library
4. Technology & Policy Development
John Wilkin, Associate University Librarian for Library Information Technology (LIT), University of Michigan, Executive Director of HathiTrust

March 31-April 13
5. 21st Century Learning & Information Use
Tom Scheinfeldt, Managing Director for Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, OMEKA Project Director
6. New Models & Structures for Collaboration
Mark Wright, Director of Partnerships, National Children's Museum

April 14-27
7. Planning for a Sustainable Future
Emlyn Koster, President & CEO, Liberty Science Center
8. Metrics for Evaluating Service & Impact
John Fraser, Director, Institute for Learning Innovation-New York

April 28-May 12
9. The 21st Century Museum & Library Workforce
Joanne Marshall, Alumni Distinguished Professor, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
10. UpNext: Where Do We Go From Here?
Larry Johnson, CEO, The New Media Consortium

May 19
Last official “Wiki Wednesday” IMLS will post wiki final summary

Should you have any questions about the wiki, please feel free to contact Mamie Bittner at mbittner@imls.gov or Erica Pastore at epastore@imls.gov.

You’re UpNext,
Mamie
Mamie Bittner
Deputy Director, Office of Policy, Planning, Research and Communication

Making Dumbarton House Relevant in 2010

2010-02-21T09:12:00.002-05:00

During our Roundtable discussion, many ideas for how Dumbarton House is, or could be, relevant to today’s visitors were offered by participants. The topic proved so thought-provoking that staff, volunteers, and even some visitors provided additional commentary in the weeks following our session.

Included below are a sampling of those suggestions for your consideration. While they aren‘t all fleshed out into concrete tour or program ideas, I think they provide a nice jumping off point for our thinking about the message of historic sites, and connecting that message with people‘s lives in the 21st century.

Financial Literacy & Economics. Can we relate Joseph Nourse’s career with the treasury department to modern day issues like the banking crisis? Could we host financial literacy programs for young people or lectures on the current recession for adults? Serena Bolliger, Eleanor Storck
The Green Movement. The way they lived historically at DH had many green elements. How can we use history/historic sites to encourage environmentally-conscious decisions today? Missy Hoggan Groppel
Genealogy. Many Americans enjoy researching personal family history. Can we connect more with the many families who were a part of DH’s history? Can we help our visitors see themselves or their families in our tours and programs? Scott Scholz, Marilyn Mazer, Eleanor Storck
Preservation. DH is an example of a house museum that is evolving and changing. Can we use that evolution, making it transparent to our visitors, to show that history is not static? Marilyn Mazer
Rise of the Political Parties. The Nourse story provides a fascinating window into the development of our early capital and nation. How did Nourse serve regardless of who was President? How did politics affect his ability to do his job? John Durel
Fragility of the New Nation. As Americans, virtually all of us today believe that despite our differences, the United States will survive as a great nation. Two hundred years ago, this was not the case. The capital city was new, the country was new, and the whole idea of democracy was new. Can we use the Nourse story to illustrate this uncertainty, along with the patriotic fervor and commitment to shared ideals that cemented the nation together--both in its earliest days and today? John Durel

At the end of our conversation, Whitney Robertson suggested that the issue of relevancy at historic sites boils down to a question of why we study history at all. As a Roundtable participant noted in an anonymous evaluation card:

“How did all of us become interested in American history? How can that answer be used to develop future historical interest (in our visitors)?”

Relevancy at Historic Sites

2010-02-18T21:32:00.003-05:00

During our January Roundtable we moved from the topic of engagement at historic sites, to the issue of relevancy. One of the recommendations in James Vaughan’s article, The Call for a National Conversation, published in the Spring, 2008 issue of Forum Journal, prompted our discussion:

"The historic site community must reaffirm the importance of these places for our nation’s future and redefine our mission in terms of that future rather than the past."

So many of our historic sites started as institutions dedicated to preserving relics of our nation’s earliest days and, in some cases, as memorials to those great Americans who helped to create and build our nation. This passion for the past was--and is--critical to our sites. It is the very reason why we exist. I wonder, though, if we interpret this past in a way that is truly meaningful for our visitors today? And if we agree that our past and our historic sites do have meaning today, are we--the staff and volunteers--clearly communicating that meaning to our public?

As education director, during docent training I would frequently cite my absolutely least favorite type of guided tour: the laundry list of random objects. These are the tours where the well-intentioned guide simply points out a number of artifacts in each room, spewing a good deal of information about each, and failing to ever connect the objects with an overarching theme or underlying sense of meaning.

The tours left me unsatisfied because I didn’t emerge with a greater understanding of the house or time period or individuals who resided there. As I think about these tours now, within the context of Vaughan’s recommendation, I think they also lacked a sense of relevancy. Why did this place matter? And, what’s more, why should I care about it today? These are the questions I think we all seek to answer to some degree when we tour a historic site. And they’re the questions I hope we can answer for our visitors here at Dumbarton House.

(In my next post, I’ll explore some of our group’s ideas about the relevancy of Dumbarton House for modern audiences.)

Visitor Engagement vs. Collections Care & Security: The Debate Continues!

2010-02-03T11:02:00.005-05:00

A short behind the scenes look at some of our internal Dumbarton House debates about how far to take the idea of visitor engagement:

Email to staff from Bridgitte Rodguez, our Visitor Services Associate:

"Hopefully we will never see a picture like this from our Museum: http://www.museumspotting.net/ " [visit site before reading on]

Response from our museum curator, Scott Scholz:

"Thank you Bridgitte, yet another reason to NOT allow free roaming of our museum. Just imagine someone lying down on out rope bed, with the ropes not tied and suing DH because of injuries sustained when the mattress caves in…or, someone sits on a chair with a weak leg and ends up breaking the chair. Shall I continue?"

Rebuttal from me, our educator-turned-executive director, Karen Daly:

"....but could we imagine an interior space where visitors could roam freely? Where they could lie down in a rope bed or try on the clothes in the linen press, or sit at the secretary and write a letter with a quill pen? Where they could take pictures of themselves playing a "real" part in the past? (Sure...not cozied up on the 18th century bed that George Washington himself slept in, perhaps, but maybe a repro....or a late 19th century revival piece....)"

Postscript: one of my favorite personal pictures from the December blizzard in Washington is included here. I loved being able to be a part of the bread line at the FDR Memorial (without having to touch the actual sculpture, of course!).

P.S. To Our Roundtable-ers

2010-02-01T16:57:00.010-05:00

Befuddled by Blogging? Can't tell betwixt a tweet and a text?

We still want you to participate! Send me or Karen an email with your comments and we'll post 'em for you!

Cultural Tourism on the Rise, Historic House Museum Visits Falling

2010-02-01T16:57:00.009-05:00

...What's Going On?

(by Karen)

As Sarah Coster astutely observed in our roundtable discussion, I think the heart of the matter comes down to engagement. And I think that tourists--our visitors--engage with other cultural and heritage tourism sites (historic cemeteries, walking tours, bed & breakfasts, quaint main street shopping districts, galleries and antique shops) in a way that is fundamentally different from how they are forced to engage with most historic house museums. At those other sites, visitors seem to have more of a choice--they can direct the experience and determine how they access the culture and heritage available. At most historic house museums, however, they have very little choice.

I think we who work in the field also have a fundamentally flawed impression of what our visitors want out of their experience. Because of our identities as educational institutions, we have grand, and perhaps overly-didactic, missions and tour objectives. We call for our docents to convey to visitors--in typically less than one hour--the history of our nation during a span of two decades or more; the story of one particular family (or many) who lived in our house during a specific period; an overview of the collection on display (which may or may not relate directly to that family); and some entertaining comments about “what life was like” for Americans at that time.

When we stop in to visit a historic house during a weekend get away or family vacation, my husband and I are rarely asked what we would like to get out of the experience. While I understand why this is at sites with huge visitation numbers--like Mount Vernon or Monticello--it never makes sense to me at sites where we are the only visitors on the tour. Wouldn’t the docent like to know that Chuck’s a high school American history teacher and I’m a historic house museum director? Wouldn’t we benefit from a presentation slightly varied from that offered to the two antique collectors who were on the last tour, or the descendents of the house’s family who will be on the next tour?

Taking one step back even further--I’m not sure that a lecture-based guided tour is even the best method for engaging all our visitors. Taking an example from my own life once again, I’m thinking about the many friends and family members we entertain for weekends here in Washington. Chuck and I LOVE history and we LOVE Washington, DC. So we LOVE hosting friends and family, and sharing the sites with them. But we also love spending time with these friends and family members--who we don’t get to see very often. As a result, the sites we typically take them to don’t involve guided tours; rather, they’re sites that we can enjoy while chit-chatting amongst ourselves, sharing tidbits we think are interesting, and catching up on family news and gossip. Typical historic house museums, therefore, often get passed by during these visits.

And if history and museum-lovers like Chuck and me are passing up historic houses, I’m quite certain many others are passing them up as well. The challenge as I see it for historic house museums, then, is three-fold:

1. Can we provide an experience for visitors that allows for social interaction and self-direction among the groups visiting?

2. Can we better tailor the experience to meet the individual visitor’s needs and wants? and

3. Can we learn from the successes of the larger cultural and heritage tourism industries….?

Then again, there’s the issue of those historic sites who seem to be bucking the trend--whose visitation is growing despite the drop-off witnessed nationally. I, for one, would like to see more study of these historic sites. Are there any lessons we can learn from them? Are there similarities or commonalities that will emerge from a critical study of these successful sites that may help us create a model for what can work moving forward?

Areas that I’d like to see explored in this kind of study include the following:

Interpretive content: is there any chance that certain topics are “hot” right now, and others aren’t? Could that be driving attendance at our nation’s historic sites?

Visitor experience: do the successful sites provide a different experience for their visitors than the struggling sites? Do they treat visitors differently? Do they allow them to engage with each other or with the site or with the collection in different ways?
Marketing and budget: are successful sites allocating more resources, proportionally as part of their entire budget, to marketing? To getting the word out about their programs & services? Do they have fundamentally different marketing strategies? Are there take-away lessons that can be applied for sites of vastly different sizes and types--$90,000 operating budgets and $5 million; historic house and community historical society?

Those of you who know me, know that I am particularly fond of data. In this particular area, I haven’t seen the data to adequately explain why some historic sites are thriving while the field as a whole is suffering. So, please do post any links to studies or articles that address this idea--or let me know if you’re working on a dissertation or thesis to tackle this idea! I’d love to learn more from these sites.

Ye Olde McDonald's vs. Monticello?

2010-02-01T16:41:00.014-05:00

...People are hungering for history, but they don't seem to want to do brunch with us. What can we do to snag an invite?

As an accomplished museum curator from a nearby historic house museum voiced right at the outset of our meeting, we departed not a little perplexed about our first and foremost focus question: Why is heritage tourism UP while visits to historic sites and museums are DOWN?

Needless to say, armed only with Vaughan's introductory article and sixty-odd minutes of discussion time, we failed to fully dissect the oniony layers of this seeming paradox - although we weighed it in our collective palm and made a few preliminary cuts that might cause museum-focused eyes to water and sting!

So let's recap our conversation and apply some additional consideration to what we'll call... the Commander Salamander Conundrum: People increasingly seek out perceived "historic experiences" in tourist environments such as Georgetown, which are authentically rich in history. Yet, once there, they often choose...

to shop on architectually well-endowed Main Streets - whether at the type of (now extinct!) unique boutique for which this conundrum is named or at the much-contested Apple Store soon to fall from the corporate tree;
to sleep in inns or B&B's that happen to snuggle up inside historic structures;
to dine (increasingly, on cupcakes) in restaurants that are similarly situated;

... But ironically, they less often choose to visit actual historic sites and museums, such as Dumbarton House and our many neighboring institutions.

When these folks ditch our visitor entrances, where else do they head off to? Why should we take this seriously, and what should we do about it? Our accomplished museum curator neighbor served up the idea that the level of engagement is what's truly at stake. Unlike the mourned J. D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield, who repeatedly visited NYC's Museum of Natural History precisely because he appreciated the permanence of the exhibits...

“The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed where it was . . . . The only thing that changed was you . . . . Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to just stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.” (The Catcher in the Rye)

.... our visitors may NOT feel compelled to return again and again. As one brave docent proposed, our limited collections and exhibit space mean that things may not change sufficiently to satisfy the repeat visitor once an historic house’s staffers have made their chesslike moves to "right" its interpretation.

Moreover, our daring docent continued, we should consider whether our increased drive for accurate furnishing and interpretive plans – which we museum professionals and proponents looove - may inadvertently deter visitors whose history nerdishness factor competes poorly with ours. For one thing, visitors like Holden will miss the lack of comforting unchangeability: Public history professionals know that for some, it's far more reassuring to gaze upon the static, statuesque curves of The Tyrannasaurus Rex of History than to fondle the puzzling bones of evolving, multiple historical narratives.

And even on a more fundamental level - our docent observed that visitors also miss the "pretty stuff" often ousted by a revised and corrected furnishing plan, that they feel the site is "colder" and "have trouble picturing life there, or wanting to live there themselves."

If this is true - gosh, how should we feel about being so incredibly unsatisfying on both the "edu-tainment" and Meaning of Life fronts? After all, as two of our worldly, well-traveled, and talented graduate student interns warned – bad historic house museums run the risk not only of being dreadfully boring, but also of ruining the very reputation of historic sites to the extent that everyone except the Very Biggest History Geeks Of All will go racing off to the Apple Store and Cupcake Shoppe instead!

A sage, experienced docent and NSCDA member countered that, sure, “accurately interpreted sites don’t look like Hollywood’s version of history anymore, and that turns people off. However, the drive for authenticity is still [inherently] important!” And our wise neighboring curator who launched this thread in the first place provided some comfort by asserting that Yes!-we can find ways to be historically accurate but still engage – even when we're divested of our lushest furnishings while M Street's lovely storefronts are decidedly not.

So - Certainly the ability to gnosh, snooze, or shop-'til-they-drop within or near an historic property may facilitate some visitors' perception of an Immersive, Meaningful, Enjoyable Historical Experience. But for those museums whose mission statements and curatorial policies fail to embrace such dramatic changes in site usage - what lessons can we at least take away about ways to engage and remain historically accurate? And what else do we need to know about the predicament of heritage tourism UP, visits to historic sites and museums DOWN? Our Director will share her thoughts with us, and we hope you will also!

Welcome to the Directing Dumbarton Blog!

2010-01-29T18:02:00.009-05:00

... an online discussion forum focused on the future of historic house museums in America. Each month Dumbarton House full time, part time, and volunteer staff will meet to discuss a reading about some aspect of historic house museum operations, musing on the impact for our field and the impact for Dumbarton House specifically, where appropriate.

We kicked off the roundtables this week with a reading of James Vaughan’s article, Introduction: The Call for a National Conversation, in the Spring 2008 issue of Forum Journal, a publication of The National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The discussion was spirited with nineteen in attendance offering a variety of perspectives and ideas. Jenna Watson and I will begin blogging in earnest early next week, tackling first a topic that generated a good deal of attention at our roundtable: the perhaps ambivalent relationship between trends in heritage tourism and trends in historic site attendance. In future weeks we’ll move on to discuss the issue of relevance at historic sites; the James Vaughan article generally; and finally, the varying wants and needs of local communities vs. the tourist audience.

Through this blog we hope to present our own thoughts and opinions, but also encourage further discussion, debate, and inquiry. Feel free to add a comment, start a new discussion thread, ask a question, or counter our arguments. We look forward to continuing our conversations online through this new forum!