Advice and help with building history capacity.
The Minnesota Historical Society’s Local History Services helps Minnesotans preserve and share their history. This blog is a resource of best practices on the wide variety of museum, preservation, conservation, funding, and non-profit management topics. We’re here to help.
Right All Along?
By: grabitsdm | July 18, 2008
The American Association of Museums chair, Carl Nold, has led Historic New England's 36 museums to reconsider how each adds value to the community the museum serves. As a result, usership and membership have steadily increased. In the summer 2008 edition of "Historic New England Magazine," Nold concludes that "it is not the nineteenth-century model of preserving a historic place and its contents that is outmoded" but rather "the way we have standardized the historic site experience, boxed it into a rigid tour, excluded the public from direct involvement with the collections, and tried to impose a single model on what are really diverse places and constituencies."
Have we been using the right model all along? Is it just our methods that need to be revised? How do you connect with your individual community and walk the fine line between catering to specific needs and not re-inventing the wheel?
Have we been using the right model all along? Is it just our methods that need to be revised? How do you connect with your individual community and walk the fine line between catering to specific needs and not re-inventing the wheel?