Wherefore Art Thou CAP Assessors?

In Chapter 1 of Book 1 of the Small Museum Toolkit, I mentioned that Heritage Preservation maintains a list of over 400 conservators, historic preservation specialists, and living collections experts who are qualified to perform assessments for the Conservation Assessment Program (CAP). These qualified assessors are spread throughout the country. Each year when the CAP staff matches participating museums with assessors, we try to pick assessors that are geographically adjacent to the participating museums.

Matching architects and historic preservationists with museums is usually easy, since architects live and work literally all over the United States. Conservators, however, can be a bit more challenging to match with participating museums, since many CAP assessor-conservators happen to live and work in New England, the Mid-Atlantic states, and the Western states. Often the CAP staff must match California-based conservators with a museum in Kansas, or a New York-based conservator with a museum in Iowa.

If you are (or know of) a master's-level trained, experienced (5 years) conservator living and working in the Midwest, Southeast, or Mountain-Plains states, Heritage Preservation invites you to apply to become a CAP assessor! Application forms are available for download from CAP's website, here: http://www.heritagepreservation.org/cap/assessors.html. CAP assessors may perform around 1 – 3 CAP assessments per year, and the CAP allocation for reimbursement from Heritage Preservation is approximately $3,400 for a five-day work commitment.
And as I'm sure the Shakespeare nerds among you will note, 'wherefore' means why, not where. So why do conservators apply to become CAP assessors? The reasons are many, but include: a desire to give back to the cultural heritage community by providing affordable conservation advice to museums that might have no other means to attain it; a desire to promulgate conservation and preservation best practices in order to ensure the protection of museum objects for future generations; and a desire to travel to the sites of different small and mid-sized museums throughout their region, in order to see the great variety of cultural institutions that our nation has to offer.

Ultimately, conservators become assessors for the same reason that you are interested in the Small Museums Toolkit: in order to protect our nation's cultural heritage.

Sara Gonzales is the Coordinator of the Conservation Assessment Program at Heritage Preservation. A graduate of the Museum Studies program at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, she has been the collections manager of a number of small museums in the suburbs of Chicago. Her previous publications include issues of CAPabilities, CAP’s bi-annual newsletter, and articles about CAP in the American Association of Museums’ Museum and the American Association for State and Local History’s History News magazines.

Why Make Visitor Studies and Evaluation a Priority?

If we could read minds, we would know exactly what exhibits to choose to do next year, what programs to accompany them, how much text on a label is too much, too little or just right. We could know what hours to be open so that the most people would come. We would understand what topics appeal to teenagers, moms with young children, fathers who work the swing shift, and visitors from out of town. Unfortunately, we can’t read minds. Our best access to what is in the hearts and minds of those people that choose to visit us—and if we make the effort to find them, those who don’t—is by conducting visitor studies and evaluations. If we ask our visitors what they think about what we do and sometimes if we watch them use our museum, we can get some clues that will help us make good choices about exhibits topics, program formats, open hours and more.

Oh no! You’re saying to yourself—one more thing I have to learn? How am I supposed to find time to ask people what they think about our activities when I barely have time to take care of the collection, put up new exhibits, spread the word about our upcoming programs, pay the bills, raise money to pay the bills, and keep the bathroom clean? When you are running a small museum, your job is to juggle all these areas (and more) and you’re working just to keep the balls in the air. Can you really add one more ball?

Yes! Because that ball is going to help you decide which balls you really need to keep in the air and which you can set aside. The key to success is setting priorities – knowing which balls to juggle. And visitor studies and evaluation can help you make those decisions in a way that makes your institution more relevant, more appealing, and more valued by your visitors. It is not a silver bullet and it doesn’t let you read minds, but it will give you clues and insight into how to make what you do better for your visitors. It may very well make your current job a lot easier!

This excerpt is adapted from the Toolkit chapter "In Lieu of Mind-Reading: Visitor Studies and Evaluation" by Stacy Klingler and Conny Graft.

Conny Graft is a consultant in interpretive planning and evaluation for museums, parks, and other nonprofit organizations. Conny retired from The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in 2010 where she worked for 27 years as Director of Interpretive Planning, Director of Interpretive Education and Manager of Research and Evaluation. Before coming to Colonial Williamsburg, Conny worked for the Division of Historic Preservation in Fairfax, Virginia and was in charge of planning programs for four historic sites.

Stacy Klingler currently serves local history organizations as the Assistant Director of Local History Services at the Indiana Historical Society. She began her career in museums as the assistant director of two small museums, before becoming director of the Putnam County Museum in Greencastle, Ind. She chairs the AASLH's Small Museums Committee (2008-2012) and attended the Seminar for Historical Administration in 2006. While she lives in the history field, her passion is encouraging a love of learning in any environment.

How and why do you interpret difficult issues in your small museum?

My primary museum experience has been as Education Director at two sites where difficult or sensitive social, political and cultural issues were addressed as major components of the interpretation. Both sites where I worked began as museums featuring the stories of prominent white families. Including the narratives of native Hawaiians at Mission Houses Museum in Honolulu, Hawai‘i has been an ongoing process for about 30 years. More inclusive interpretation of the enslaved men, women and children at the Bellamy Mansion – a site with just 2 full time and 2 part time paid staff - is far more recent.

I found that the challenges of interpreting difficult issues are rewarded by the fact that the museum’s volunteer base, attendance, membership, and funders can all grow as a result of appealing to the wider community. Expanding interpretation broadens your audience, broadens community entities that find value in your organization, connects you to national conversations on historical issues, and increases long-term sustainability through wider membership appeal and repeat visits. Change creates a fresh feel and exciting dynamic that can spread from the board and staff to the audience and community. A vital, dynamic site that has a broad base of community stakeholders is better prepared to survive in any economic climate.

I’d like to share how we took opportunity for real exchange during tours given at the Bellamy Mansion Museum of their urban slave quarters. The Bellamy Mansion Museum site holds a two-story brick Italianate slave quarters 50 feet from the mansion’s back door. A comment we often got from the public was how “nice” this building is. This “nice” comment provides an opportunity to draw the audience out of their comfort zone of expected reality and step into the shoes of those who lived in this space. Docents are able to have visitors step away from the building into the yard. The docent can point out how the quarters were situated on the lot. It is in the corner of the lot built on the back property line. There are no windows in the back wall as there are none in the back wall of the carriage house, the other structure built on the property line. Out the side windows to the west were the chicken house and the carriage house and stables, giving limited visibility and ventilation and proximity to noxious fumes from the animals. The quarters were typical of urban sites in that the sleeping areas were in the same building as work spaces. The building was where laundry was done. The work created heat and humidity in a climate that is often enough hot and humid. There was also a “necessary,” or an indoor privy, with its associated odors. Yes, there is a solid elegance to the structure, but its realities were not those of comfort and convenience. And yes, the life of an enslaved house servant in an urban center was far different and much more comfortable than that of an enslaved field hand. Yet, to quote Richard Starobin commenting on the phenomenon of urban slavery, “[It] might be supposed not to be so hard as one would imagine….But slavery is slavery wherever it is found" (in Industrial Slavery in the Old South).

The truth is that a great deal of “hidden” history can be revealed. You can look into other sites doing similar work dealing with similar issues. As you explore a broader interpretation, look for what is unique about your site and what is similar to others to aid your research. Find what you can about other families in the area from the time period and work from there. Sites with African-American programming listed online will reveal programming on broad topics that are not strictly specific to the site. Browsing sites on the internet, I found lectures on the general overview of what life was like for enslaved individuals in the Mid-Atlantic region during the late 18th century, building techniques and materials used by enslaved builders, and a local 19th century African-American whose primary achievements were across the country from the site. These were all interesting programs but not narrowly specific to their sites. Be persistent and be patient. Listen to your local educators, scholars and librarians. Use online sources. Pick up the phone and call other sites. It is not that the information is easy and abundant, but that there is enough information for you to work with in a responsible way with substantial results.

Madeline C. Flagler completed her B.A. at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her graduate studies at University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Previously Ms. Flagler has been Education iDrector at Mission Houses Museum, Honolulu, Hawai’i and Bellamy Mansion Museum, Wilmington, N.C. She is currently Executive Director, Wrightsville Beach Museum of History. Each of these museums is a small museum with limited staff heavily supplemented by volunteers.

We Gotta Do What????

You have a new facility to hold your community museum’s collection. Well, it’s “new,” in a way. It’s an old house with some meaningful and teachable connections to the community’s evolution. Its five-acre lot also has potential for outdoor entertainment and fundraising events.

Studies have shown that a visitor’s (and potential donor’s) first impressions are often the most lasting. And those impressions, more often than not, are of how well we maintain our structures and landscapes. Look at them as artifacts in their own right. A leaky roof, broken window panes, cracked sidewalks, and poor drainage are as great a threat as dust, molds, excess humidity, and unfiltered light. They are, in fact, often the root causes of those conditions.

What do you need to do first? Time’s a wastin’! You need to apply for a Museum Assessment Program ( MAP ). Then prepare for those eventual meetings with structural and landscape consultants. The priorities you establish may change as these folks reveal unique possibilities, unforeseen realities, and likely costs. These initial steps will prepare you to answer the questions they will ask as you evaluate your museum’s significance.

-Inspect the condition of the entire property, inside and out - from the roof and chimney, to the basement, yard and beyond.

-Inventory the existing plants and trees.

-Read up on the latest in conservation literature.

-Research the building’s history, its owners, and its past use.

-See how the property’s relationship with the surrounding neighborhood changed over time.

-Write down any questions you will want to ask the structural and landscape consultants.

-Ask yourself what story, lessons, and environmentally sustainable practices you're including in your mission statement.

For a detailed, step-by-step discussion of these processes, please check out Chapter Two, “Straight Talk About Structures and Landscapes,” in Volume Six of the Small Museum Toolkit, published by AltaMira Press.

Bruce Teeple is a freelance writer, editor, local historian, speaker, gardener, chicken farmer, and columnist for the Centre Daily Times in State College. Pennsylvania. A graduate of Penn State in history and political science, he served for nineteen years as curator of the Aaronsburg Historical Museum before joining AASLH’s Small Museums Committee. He is currently researching and writing As Good as a Handshake: the Farringtons and the Political Culture of Moonshine in Central Pennsylvania. His latest work is “Slavery In Post-Abolition Pennsylvania….And How They Got Away With It.”

Plan Before You Leap

I recently had a conversation with another small museum colleague that made me think, this is why collections planning is so incredibly important!

This colleague is on the board of a small historical society. The society’s director (without consulting the board) decided that a particular cross section of the collection was irrelevant to the society’s mission. Staff members from another museum were invited to access the objects pending deaccessions to determine if they were interested. Needless to say, the board member was extremely upset that the director would plow ahead without consulting the board and questioned how one person could decide what’s important to the historical society and what isn’t. Well, that’s the whole point of collections planning. One person can’t decide.

This organization needs to slow down! Collections planning is about thinking and acting strategically to acquire, develop, and allocate collections resources to advance the mission. This involves thinking about how the collections are being used, the strengths and weaknesses of the collection, and how the collections should be grown or culled to best meet the mission. It shouldn’t be a knee-jerk reaction to satisfy a short-term goal. Collections planning is a process, and once complete, the historical society would have a framework from which to make strategic decisions about the collections. Ideally, this process would involve the historical society’s staff and perhaps one or two key board members.

To start the process, the collections planning committee might want to read the chapter I co-authored with Jackie Hoff in the Small Museum Toolkit, book 6 (Stewardship: Collections and Historic Preservation) titled “Collections Planning: Best Practices in Collections Stewardship” and consider gathering examples from other historical societies. In fact, one example is even provided in the text. The chapter describes the importance of collections stewardship, demystifies collections related jargon (like, what’s the difference between a collections policy and a collections plan?), and provides a framework and practical solutions for collections planning.

Hopefully, this chapter—and many others in the series—will provide other small museums the resources and tools they need to identify and tackle collections related challenges. As for my colleague, I suspect that person will be championing the historical society’s need for a collections plan at the next board meeting!

Nicolette Meister is the curator of collections at the Logan Museum of Anthropology at Beloit College and also teaches collections management in College’s museum studies program. She is a graduate of the Museum and Field Studies program at the University of Colorado at Boulder and has held numerous collections related positions. She was a member of the AASLH Small Museums Committee from 2007-2011.