How Do You Make a Site of Conscience?

A week or so ago, the memory site, 23.5 of the Hrant Dink Foundation opened to the public in Istanbul, Turkey. I've had the opportunity to visit this site twice, once a year ago, and once in late March of this year, and I wanted to share the site and their development process in the hopes it might be useful to anyone thinking about opening any kind of historic site--not just a site of conscience.

To begin--who was Hrant Dink?  He was a prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist, persecuted several times for his beliefs, and assassinated in 2007 on the steps of the office of the newspaper he edited, Agos.  It is these offices that are now 23.5,  the site of memory.  Why 23.5?  April 23rd is Children's Day in Turkey and many places around the world.  April 24 is the day in 1915 when the Turkish government began rounding up and disappeared--the start of the Armenian genocide.  So this public site straddles both the joy of children and the pain of genocide--with the hope of reconciliation.

A year ago when I visited the site, it still felt like an office.  Big notebooks of the ongoing assassination case files lined one wall, and Dink's office itself looked as he left it.  Nayat Karaköse and the team from the Hrant Dink Foundation sat and talked with us about the plans for the site.  There was a big story to tell, in a relatively small space.  How would it work?

First, there were a series of community consultations, asking the questions. In the memory site, what do you want to see? what do you want to discover? what issues are to be emphasized? what are the deficiencies that you expect to be corrected? what kind of educational and visitor programs do you wish to see? what are the themes and approaches you would never want to see?  Participating in these were artists, sociologists, communication specialists, curators, Agos newspaper employees, members of the Dink family, representatives of various civil society organizations, academics and students.

Nayat had visited dozens of Sites of Conscience around the world.  It might not be possible for you to visit all these places, but the Foundation's report is exceptionally useful (and free to download!).  These visits helped solidify what this memory site would be, in part by identifying some key characteristics of meaningful sites. The most compelling sites:

• "have guides who take part in linking truths to present realities with a dynamic narrative, providing commentary and hold a dialogue with the visitor; 
• have objects exposed that embody the past, rendering it visible, so that small stories on which big narratives cast a shadow can come to the fore; 
• promote hope and incorporate messages that encourage visitors to contribute to a better future; incorporate visitors into the memorialisation process, providing a space for their experiences, ideas, feelings and suggestions; and
• are dynamic, constantly being updated, opening the way to new exhibits and thus able to present different experiences to visitors at different times."

When I came back this spring, as the team worked madly to get the space partly ready to share with those of us who were there for the conference Memory Sites, Memory Paths: Towards Another Future which brought together experts from memory sites and academia to share their work.  On that visit, I could see the ideas come to life--and to see how, as it often is, developing strong interpretation is often a process of pruning away ideas, until the strong branches of the concept come into view.  Now, a visitor is encouraged to reflect;  they meet Hrant Dink as not just a heroic figure, but as a human, struggling with ideas and the world. Visitors see the impact his work and life had--and ponder how they can have an impact as well.

Any historic site must wrestle with many of these same questions and ideas.  The answers you find will be different--but the asking of questions, rather than a certainty, must be an integral part of the process. 

When we visited this year, it was just days before this year's election for the mayor of Istanbul mayor.  Giant election posters from the ruling party could be seen everywhere.  The results of that election--the victory of reformer Ekrem İmamoğlu were overturned and a second election was just held in June. The result: an even bigger victory margin for İmamoğlu and a hopeful sense of possibility away from a government that has imprisoned thousands for their beliefs.  Human rights are still endangered in Turkey, as they are in many places around the world, but the opening of this site, like so many other Sites of Conscience, is cause for optimism.  As Hrant Dink wrote,

"Perceptions on both sides can only change in an environment of contact and dialogue. Therefore, ‘solving history’ is not actually a real concept, or a problem. There is nothing to be solved about history anyway… There is only a part of it that has to be understood. And understanding necessitates a process of learning, enlightenment and comprehension, spread out over time."

My best wishes and great admiration to the entire team of this project!

Still Good? A Museum Re-Visit

Have you ever visited a museum again after a number of years, wondering if it will still be as interesting or exciting as you thought it once was? A couple weeks ago I had the chance to revisit Plimoth Plantation, somewhere I had last visited probably twenty years ago.  The memory of that long-ago visit was a lovely one, around Thanksgiving, with my big extended family.  Our kids, now all grown-up, fully engaged with the interpreters, and I still remember how the way one wowed my nephew, who described himself as living beyond the Hudson, by switching to speaking in Dutch.

Would it still be good?  Would there be interactive media everywhere?  Do people still suspend belief at a living history site?  What would I think?  Here's the good news:  I still found it compelling, and found some additional changes that deepened the experience even more.  The better news:  the things that matter are those that any organization can do.  Ask deep questions, seek answers, care about the visitors, and be unafraid to shake things up.

Some of what I saw:

The biggest change is that your first stop in the 17th century is the Wampanoag village.  When I visited before, the village seemed an afterthought to all those Pilgrims.  Now Native people, rightly, are who you encounter first.  But you didn't encounter them without any guidance.  This large clear label, addressing directly, the misconceptions a visitor might have and what is considered respectful behavior, was read by almost everyone as they walked down the path.  The label begins, "Do you have a picture in mind from movies or books of what 'Indian' looks like?"   The change in approach--both physical and conceptual--helped to shift your perspective.

And something I saw over and over again, throughout the visit, was how skilled the interpreters were at meeting visitors where they were.  Here's a conversation about deer hunting, with a tourist from the midwest.  They chatted about bow hunting, about the return of deer to suburban neighborhoods, about recipes using venison, and more.

And here's an interpreter talking to students.  I only heard part of the conversation, when a boy asked if the interpreter gave someone a butt-whipping.  "I killed him,"  said the man, to somewhat stunned silences from the group.  He continued to explain and engage, but the sense that this was no easy place, came through loud and clear.  Below that, a visitor from the UK has a long conversation about where she's from, and where the character the interpreter is playing is from.  Just down the road, as it happens.

A question about a interpreter's bandaged finger, deftly handled, led to a broader discussion about the different kinds of religious beliefs at the Plantation, all the while the multi-tasking women continued their daily chores.

Every single interpreter I met, listened to, or eavesdropped on, was thoughtful, kind, and exceptionally responsive to visitors.  It's the end of the busy summer season and I'm sure loads of those questions (and bad visitor jokes) were ones they had heard many times before.  But they never seemed that way.  I want to know more about their training!

There were some new elements.  Down at the bottom of the road was "America's first test kitchen."  In a house no longer considered accurate, an uncostumed interpreter was testing recipes, on the day I visited, using quince.  The signage outside, her dress, and the printed-out recipe, all easily transitioned you back to a contemporary space and let you easily shift your conversational focus.  A new crafts building outside the village allowed close-up looks at the production of pottery, flies for fishing,  bread and textiles.

As you can see, it was a beautiful day with great light, so I was also struck with the messiness and everydayness of the site.  Reproductions allow the visitors to fully embrace the site:  to see the messy bed, the dirty fireplace, the wrinkled clothes hung up rather than the original draped artfully over the bed. There's no preciousness of artifacts here.

I ended my visit with a colonial meal--that's a peas cod (a sort of handpie),  squash, and some cucumber pickles and left feeling refreshed and rejuvenated in all sorts of ways, not least about the ways in which we can, when we work hard enough, connect with our visitors.

Boundary Crossing in Museums

In the first of two guest posts, Andrea Jones, Director of Programs and Visitor Engagement, Accokeek Foundation in Maryland reflects on what pushing out interpretive boundaries at a colonial farm to become more relevant and meaningful. Stay tuned for part 2!

Creativity is often described as “thinking outside the box.” But have you ever contemplated just how arbitrary these boxes are? While teaching high school anthropology, I learned that the concept of race doesn’t even really exist, biologically.  (Mind = blown!) It’s all a spectrum of physical attributes that are categorized differently all over the world. Yet, from an early age I was conditioned to check the “Caucasian” box on every required form. Consequently, the cultural concept of race affected my identity in a profound way.

Lots of other boxes are arbitrary, too. And today’s society increasingly questions those definitions as more voices are heard. Are there more genders than just male and female? What is an American? Is Pluto a planet?

Boxes can be comforting and useful since they help us to understand the world around us, but they are also limiting. They don’t honor the complexity of life and the myriad possibilities that exist when boundaries are crossed.

Looking at categories as arbitrary human creations is a powerful way to shift your perspective and unlock creative new approaches to interpretation 

in museums.

Here are three boundaries [two in this post, one to come] we crossed at my museum (Accokeek Foundation) and how crossing them helped us to increase our relevancy and challenge our thinking.

First, what is Accokeek Foundation (AF)? AF is a partner of the National Park Service on Piscataway Park just south of Washington, D.C., in Maryland. We steward and interpret 200 acres of this park, including two farms. One of these farms, the National Colonial Farm, has used living history for over 40 years to interpret the lives and techniques of middling tobacco-growers in the colonial era. 

Using History to Teach Environmental Science

Along the east coast, where we are, you can’t throw a stone without hitting a butter churn or a spinning wheel. There is no shortage of historic farms to get your colonial fix. And frankly, the hey-day of this kind of interpretation seems to have passed. We decided it was time to look outside of the discipline of colonial history in its purest form. It was time for a remix.

One day a visiting mom said to her child, “See, aren’t we lucky we have electricity and cars, and all the things we have today?” I thought about what she said. Yes, life was definitely more convenient. But through the lens of environmentalism, all of the convenience has come at a great cost.

Coal burning plant with mining in front.  Photo:  Getty

What if the colonial era was a starting point for the story of the most challenging environmental issues today?

Instead of considering 1770 (our chosen interpretive year) as a time just before the American Revolution, what if we used this snapshot in time to look at family habits in an era when people were more directly connected to each environmental choice they made?

Today, water comes out of our bathroom sink – but from where? How much energy does it take?

"Hidden from view" water treatment plant     Where does water come from?

How does that compare to colonial times? The typical middling colonial family knew exactly how much energy (physical energy) it took to haul water from a nearby stream or well. They used it judiciously – approximately 4 gallons/day per person (according to our estimates). Today, each American uses between 80-100 gallons/day. That is a 2,000% increase in water use.

Most of us are completely disconnected to the “secret life of water” because of today’s complex infrastructure, urbanization, and increased job specialization. We don’t know how much energy is used in treatment plants and how little fresh water is readily available as the population swells and the climate changes.  By combining two disciplines, we can look at scientific issues with an eye towards understanding changes in human behavior through time.

In an initiative we call Green History, we rotate themes on the farm every 6- 8 weeks or so: Energy Conservation and Climate Change; Water Conservation; The Health of Soil; Food Waste; etc. Our first-person colonial interpreters invite visitors to join them in activities that act as conversation starters around the theme. For example, they help to carry water using a yoke to help our colonial family do laundry or water plants.

It’s hard work. But instead of leaving visitors with the shallow understanding that “life was hard back then,” we try to redirect that assumption to a bigger question:

“What is more important, convenience or conservation?

Can we have both?”

Colonial interpreters are trained to start dialogues designed to get visitors talking about this question, to help them draw comparisons between colonial life and their lives.

The interpretation is not designed to romanticize the past. Although colonial people used less water, they also did not have the benefit of current-day sanitation afforded by convenient water – sanitation that saves lives. It’s complex.

Seeing history through the lens of science has been a hugely impactful perspective-changer for our institution, as well as for me personally. But I’d be lying if I said it’s been easy to thread the needle, given that visitors expect a purely historical experience.

We work continually to try out different scripted conversation starters to help get visitors to think of themselves as current-day environmental decision-makers, while surrounded by the past. Part of the challenge is branding ourselves as an institution known for this kind of interpretation so that people are attracted to the experience because of its environmental conscience – rather than colonial history alone.

Time Traveling from Present to Past

The Colonial Era, as a specific category of history, was another boundary crossed. We wanted to completely erase that famous question that is often asked in history class: “What does this have to do with me?”

Each of our Green History themes includes a small hand-made exhibit that draws attention to a current-day environmental issue. This issue is then brought to life in the past on our colonial farm. Visitors usually encounter the current-day exhibit first, which provides a great way to frame their experience in 1770.

Since most of these exhibits are staffed by an interpreter, the area becomes a center for questions that you can’t ask a first-person colonial character.

During our Food Waste theme, we created sight rare to most colonial farms – a bicycle rigged to a compost tumbler. The odd contraption was meant to draw people in to talk to our staff member about compost.

They could take a spin on the “Hot Rot” (as we called it) and also play a compost sorting game to win $2,200 in fake money (the cash value of the food wasted by the average American family of four each year).  

Visitors were then invited back to 1770, to help the Bolton family to do some fall food preservation. The living history interpreters on the farm taught visitors preservation methods that have been lost in recent generations (pickling, drying, repurposing apples into apple butter, etc.).

The characters also make efforts to communicate something deeper – the true value of food when you are the human who has grown it from seed. Wasting is not so easy when agricultural plants are precious and cared for over many months.

This past to present boundary crossing is an explicit way for our visitors to connect history to their lives. It gives a fuller picture of a specific current-day issue – that it didn’t just pop up out of nowhere. These problems are the product of many thousands of decisions made by everyday people over time.

It also becomes obvious how RECENT some our environmental problems are. Food waste has increased by 50% since the year I was born (1970!). The brevity of the problem actually gives me hope that the trajectory of this course can be altered. We want to pass on this feeling of hope and empowerment that the context of history provides. The future of history is not inevitable.

What's Next, Donetsk?

 

It seems hard to believe that spring was just arriving in In late April, when my Hungarian friend and colleague Gyorgyi Nemeth and I spent just over a week in Donetsk, Ukraine, under the auspices of a Cultural Manager Residency with Eko-Art, a local NGO.  Now, as full summer has arrived here in the Catskills, I've finally found some time to share our thoughts on the visit.

Our goal was to learn as much as we could about the industrial heritage of the city, to share some ideas about how it might be presented, and to meet with as many interested people as possible.  You can read more about our experiences in previous blog posts (here and here) but we wanted to share widely our observations about potential opportunities and next steps.  This post will focus on the more intangible aspects of heritage and possible presentations; a following post by Gyorgyi will focus on the built environment.

What's Happening Now

The industrial heritage of Donetsk is amazing—pure and simple.  It represents a substantial opportunity for a Ukrainian city to take on aspects of history that currently do not receive much focus in other cities.  There are a number of  individuals and organizations working to preserve and share the history and heritage of industrialization in different ways:

• Izolyatsia is in a former insulation plant and has made a name for itself by working with both international and Ukrainian artists to create site-specific works.  Their 2011 exhibit by Cai Guo-Qiang was one of the most memorable experiences I’d had in a long time.  The creative staff has begun working to collect oral histories of the plant as time permits and the site and city continue to provide fertile ground for site-specific work.
• The Regional Museum has a chronological exhibition, done in the 1980s,  of the history of the region, including the industrial history.  The industrial exhibition is a bit dated but contains some intriguing objects and archival materials.  The collections and education staff at the museum were very generous with their time and very interested in hearing about other industrial history projects, asking us to share our perspectives on the museum and future possibilities.  2013 marks the second year of the Night of Industrial History in Donetsk, an evening that brings a number of organizations together to create events focused on the history and the Regional Museum is a key participant. 
• The Metallurgical Museum is located in a building just outside the gates of the metallurgy plant itself.  We understood from the director that there are plans for a new, expanded museum.  As currently composed, the Museum is a static, old-fashioned exhibition.
• While we were in Donetsk, the city government announced that they would be restoring the John Hughes' (Welsh founder of the metallurgical plant and the city) house (currently in private hands) for use as a museum, but no details were announced as to what the museum would be about or what it would contain.
• Journalist Yevgeny Yasenov is the primary author of http://www.donjetsk.com/.  Here he encourages the sharing of photographs and memories,  wanders into and documents the current state of historic spaces.  Yevgeny was kind enough to sit down with us for a bit in the Park of Forged Figures for a wide-ranging conversation (and thanks go, as for our entire Donetsk experience, for interpretation by Anya Kuzina).  We covered lots of ground, but of particular importance was the fact that, as everywhere in the former Soviet Union, there is no history and little motivation for communities to work together to preserve their own history.  In that way,  this and other online efforts, including one by Daniel Lapin who showed us Hughes house,  represent a way to reclaim history from scientists and scholars, many of whom still embrace an older way of thinking. 
• We found it challenging to find much scholarship about industrial history in Ukraine—artist Paul Chaney shared some information he’d found from UK historians and museums, focusing on John Hughes.
• And of course, Eko-Art, our sponsor for the visit, now has an expanded interest in the ways that industrial heritage can build a sense of community.

Industrial History is Everyone's Story

When we began working with students at the Lyceum, several people doubted that those particular students, headed towards university, would have any direct connections to mining or metallurgy.  But they did—every one had a family member or neighbor who had worked in the mines.  This reinforced to us that industrial history is everyone’s history in Donetsk.   In the student projects, they shared photographs, memories, archival materials and objects that together, can help to create a nuanced, multi-faceted understanding of the community’s past and help to inspire conversation about the future.

So What’s Next?

The opportunities are limitless and we hope that organizations work together to increase an understanding.  Gyorgyi will talk in a later post about what can be done to preserve the built industrial heritage, but here are just a few suggestions to begin preserving and sharing the city’s history .

• Involve young people in the process of collecting oral histories.  By training students to conduct oral histories, it expands the range of workers for inclusion and helps to build a broader understanding of the changing nature of industrial work in the city.  These individual stories help move the history from “the workers”  in a generic sense to a more complex, nuanced understanding that includes many voices and perspectives.  It shares the authority of telling that history, moving it from a single perspective to a broad, complex view.
• Begin a process of collecting material culture related to industrial work over the last fifty years (generally, not much is represented from 1960 on in museums).  Collect workers’ clothing, documents,  material from social clubs, and more.
• Develop outdoor exhibits and signage that draws attention to the history.  Students suggested posters on trams to attract an older generation (because they go so much slower than marshrutkas they are less crowded and people have time to read).   Interpretive panels could be on bus stops or pop-up exhibits in the city’s many well-kept parks.
• Building on the current web presence, expand the work of museums and local avocational historians on the web, in Russian, Ukrainian and English .
• Develop walking tours (either guided or with downloadable audio guides) that highlight the city’s industrial heritage.
• As Izolyatsia is already doing, continue to embrace ways in which contemporary art can lead to deeper explorations of the region's history.
• Work with the local tourism agency to establish industrial heritage as an asset.  Consider establishing an industrial history working group to share ideas and approaches within the city.
• Continue to expand international connections such as those already developed by Izolyatsia and the Regional Museum.   Consider partnering with Donetsk's sister cities including Pittsburgh, PA and Sheffield, England.  There’s no question that industrial historians and enthusiasts worldwide view Donetsk’s history as something of enormous interest.

And finally, citizens of Donetsk, embrace your industrial history the same way you embrace your football team!

Memorial Museums: Join A Conversation

From the September 11 Memorial and Museum to the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum to the Holodomor and Chernobyl Museums in Kyiv and Gulag museums in the former Soviet Union, to Holocaust memorials and museums in Europe and the United States,  interpretation at memorial museums has become a part of our international museum practice--and perhaps more importantly, these museums have become important ways for the public to understand violent, complex and often horrifying aspects of our common history.   As we reframe the idea of museums into a third space, with a community-centered focus,  it's more important than ever to consider the range of questions that these museums provoke in our work.

On Monday, April 30, 9:00-10:15 AM, at the AAM Annual Conference, I'll be joining an talented group of colleagues for an open dialogue exploring the  interpretation at memorials and memorial museums.  Chaired by Stacey Mann, Director of Learning Strategies, Night Kitchen Interactive, Philadelphia, PA (who did an amazing job moving our session from idea to reality), the presenters include Wendy Aibel-Weiss, Director of Programs, Tribute WTC Visitor Center; Danny Cohen, Lecturer, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL;  Ian Kerrigan, Assistant Director of Exhibition Development, National September 11 Memorial & Museum, New York, NY and me. The session sprang from all of our contributions to the fall, 2011 issue of Exhibitionist: Museums, Memorials, and Sites of Conscience. 

As a group, we've identified a list of key questions for discussion. A few of the questions on our list:

• How do collective memories of different atrocities and violent events differ across time and between communities? 
• Why do visitors make a pilgrimage to contemporary sites of tragedy?
• In this age of instant global communication, who “owns” an international tragedy?
  
• Are there age-appropriate guidelines to exhibitions that focus on human tragedy? How can museums engage children and younger audiences in these topics?
• How might the marginalization of particular histories impact collective memory and collective action?
• Should memorials and ways of commemorating be designed to change / shift over time?  If so, how?
• How do we balance individual loss and collective stories?
• Who determines the "truth" of a memorial museum?
• What happens when the "truth" presented by an authority changes?  or when the authority changes?

But we've designed this as a conversation (we promise, no endless talking heads)--so we'd like to hear from you, whether or not you'll be at the conference.  What questions do you have about memorials and memorial museums?  What do you want to make sure we share our perspectives on?  What do you wonder about?  What issues do you think memorial museums are frightened of facing?  What do you think the long-term impact of these museums can be?  Please weigh in here in the comments with questions, ideas and perspectives;  plan to join us on the 30th; and of course, check back here for a full report.

Image: Brian Kusler on Flickr

Take the Ten Word Story Challenge!

At yesterday's AASLH webinar on storytelling, I invited participants a ten word story challenge as a way of using our imaginations about the historic spaces that we share with our visitors.  What's a ten word story challenge?  At some point, it's said that Ernest Hemingway was challenged by a friend to write a story in ten words--he responded with a story in only six.  His story?

                        For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Many of the participants in the webinar had wonderful responses when I asked them for a ten word story about the image shown at the top of this post.  The responses had a sense of drama, of excitement, that is often not found in historic house interpretation.  Here are just a few of the responses:

The dog passed, the lamp went dark.  No one ever ate in this room again.   
Answered an ad to go to the prairie as a bride.

The house is still; mourners are in the parlour.
Mother left. The children found her dog.
Yikes! Empty space on wall!  Out looking for another picture.
Awoke. Snuck off. Had fun. With who?

A quiet man had lunch. 

After the earthquake the lamp eventually stopped swinging.

The light was lit, they led them into the hall.

 Take the challenge--what's your story of this place?

The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamlined House Tour

Last week, I spent a great deal of time on the road, a not unusual occurence,  and in the early morning, I'm always happy to hear Garrison Keillor come through my car radio with the Writers' Almanac.
On March 2 it was Dr. Suess's birthday--but it was also Tom Wolfe's birthday and Keillor shared a bit of Wolfe's essay on journalism, in which he suggested that reporters needed to employ four technical devices more commonly used in fiction to get at the emotional core of any story.   As the story continued, I realized that Wolfe's four rules were exactly in line with what makes a great guided tour (something I've been pondering lately for a couple different organizations, including the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, NY).
So, what did Wolfe, the author of both fiction and non-fiction classics such as Bonfire of the Vanities, The Right Stuff and The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby think journalists (and by my extension, historic site tour developers) do to engage their audiences?  It's pretty simple.

1. Construct scenes
2. Dialogue, lots of it
3. Carefully noting social status details everything from dress and furniture to the infinite status clues of one's speech.
4. Point of view in the Henry James' sense of putting the reader inside the mind of someone other than the writer (or tour developer).

Those, said Wolfe, are the devices that give fiction its absorbing, gripping quality, making the reader feel present in the scene described or even inside the skin of a particular character.   I suspect that Wolfe, when he wants a writer to note details such as dress and furniture doesn't mean to imply that those details are the most important part of the narrative, but rather that those details support the larger emotional connection.

Think about the last tour you took and compare it to the last novel you read.  A novel requires a significantly greater investment of time but we stick with it, because the rewards, those emotional connections, may be far greater.  I'd love to hear from readers about tours that made those strong emotional connections--where have you been?

Photos from Flickr
Top by Lachlan Hardy; bottom by Mo Riza

What Really Happens Out on Those Guided Tours?

Many historic sites spend a great deal of time thinking about, planning, moaning about the guided tours at their site.  Although there’s definitely mixed opinions about guided tours (see Susie Wilkening’s post here),  there’s no doubt that they’re still the primary way that many visitors experience historic homes.

I’m working with the Thomas Cole National Historic Site on a new interpretation of their historic house, thanks to the support of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.   As a part of the project I created an assessment form and staff and a small group of board members have headed off to visit  variety of historic homes and museums.

Because not everyone on the planning team could make all the site visits, the visitors have written visit reports for all of us, and as a group, they present a great picture of what’s right and what’s wrong with guided tours.  I won’t name the sites here, but as you read these excerpts, remember that these visitors are people who are already inclined to be historic house goers—they are college-educated, have a passion for art, history, or architecture, and already spend a substantial chunk of their professional or volunteer time involved with a historic house.  Their thoughtful reports made me want to visit some places;  put some places on my don’t bother list, and most of all, reminded me that what we think is happening is only sometimes happening in our visitor experiences.   And a caveat as well, these were visitors without families,  so there certainly is an entire other layer of experiences that are had by visitors.

A few of their thoughts:

Again and again, the guide would urge the visitors to imagine what [a president, the house resident] might have been feeling or thinking  as he walked up the very stairs we were walking up, or moving throughout the very same rooms we were moving through. The house served almost as a minimalist stage for the drama of [the president], the experience being very much  like participating in a one-man show, something along the lines of a somber  version of  “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding.” The guide was theatrical and captivating, excited about his subject and eager to connect to his audience.

I came away feeling that the goal, president or not, is conveying the importance of the individual’s ideas and achievements in the most powerful way possible.

One of the most interesting aspects of our visit to [historic site] was that each of us came away with very different experiences. This was one of my favorite visits for it had originality and took a very bold risk in its approach to presenting and interpreting the site. 

The risk was this: the onus of the quality of a visitor’s experience rested entirely on the virtuosity of the tour guide. Ours was a young post-grad type who I found totally resistable, perhaps due to his cornball jokes starting out. But once we were underway, his animation, knowledge and sheer passion for his subject took over and captivated his audience, at least me.

Our  guide was an affable man who couldn’t hide his pride and admiration for the project but warned us that he tended to ramble on and ramble on he did…. Though our guide did a decent job of discussing life at [historic house] and the restoration process, his lack of discipline in presentation made me wonder if I had reacted too harshly to the swiss watch precision of the other tours. The second floor was supposedly self-guided with some miscellaneous displays about the building but our eager guide followed us upstairs and kept talking.

This was the least satisfying of any of the tours I took on our junket, so it serves an important purpose of establishing an example of what to avoid. The guide seemed to be a staff person pressed into service perhaps due to a shortage of docents. She was not unpleasant but had a perfunctory, somewhat unsure and occasionally apologetic tone in her delivery. She did make it clear that they were undergoing some rethinking and re-organizing of their interpretive plan, but meanwhile “this is what we have” seemed to by the M.O.

The lesson learned here was clearly about the importance of defining your purpose to yourself before presenting it to others. What story is most important about your place? What story do you want the public to take away with them? What contribution does the existence of your place make to the greater understanding of our culture, our world, our history? None of these questions were even approached, much less answered  by this muddled and directionless tour. We couldn’t wait to leave.

Our guide was the dream docent that any museum would covet. A local woman of a certain age, she had been with the house for twelve years, since its opening to the public. She had such a wonderful comfort level with her material that I felt immediately well taken care of. She just had it in her bones. And yet there was not a trace of smugness – just a warm, chatty style ,no sense of memorizing a script, always ready to field any question at any time, and then expound upon it.

The team shared several take-away lessons about the work of interpretive planning.  They included:

• The lesson learned for me here was clear: go big or go home
• The entire experience draws the visitor into a very defined and vivid world with a very specific point of view. Lesson: a strong clear mission that is presented with consistency, both physically and thematically, is very powerful.

And there’s another important take-away for me—I often hear complaints about boards not understanding the work that museum professionals do.   These site visits deepened a group of board members' understandings not only about their own site, but about the work of interpretation.  Try taking your board members on a field trip—even to a nearby museum or historic site.   Anne Ackerson, in her blog, Leading by Design recently wrote a great post about fostering good ideas on a board—it’s exactly this kind of experience that can help lead to those new ideas and discoveries about the work your organization does.  How do you encourage your board to learn?