Developing Interpretive Plans

Thoughtful planning is essential in the creation of effective interpretation.  Once your organization has accepted root and branch that interpretation is your primary focus, you are ready to move on to planning what that interpretation will be. Having done the hard background work to position your institution to interpret its collection, it is time to decide on the best ways to do that. 

A good interpretive plan offers key concepts and a structure that is designed to spin a web of connections for the visitor between what they are seeing in the museum and their own experiences and lives.  Strong connections strongly will capture the visitor’s imagination on a deep level.  Although we cannot in every instance do this explicitly, the more connections that visitors can make to the story of your museum, the more often they will want to visit and become engaged.

Interpretive Planning is a process that takes time.  First, all in the organization must be on board knowing that the plan will ultimately generate new ideas and approaches.  It can be helpful to emphasize that the plan may only codify messages that are already part of the museum’s current offerings. 

While an Interpretive Plan can be a wholesale change in how a museum approaches itself, it does not have to be.  If you do not want to lose existing stakeholders while you consider strategies for building relationships with new ones, it is helpful to think of the plan as one that will include existing messages or aspects of your interpretation you already do well.

All interpretation must rest on bedrock of good scholarship, so do involve scholars and other experts early and often.  Engage actively with scholarship, reading new material in your field regularly.  When developing interpretive planning documents, staff and volunteers should conduct their own research and build their own knowledge foundations.

At the same time, remember that you have an obligation to convey scholarship to a wide public.  Academic research should support what you do, but do not let it take over.  Although the post-modern discourse related to the “liminal space of the dining room table’s social topography” (as one scholar opaquely commented in a planning session) may sound impressive and contain some really good nuggets of academic research, you need to play the translator. 

This does not mean “dumbing down.”  Just the opposite.  You want to challenge your audience, engaging fully with difficult topics and complex ideas.  As discussed in the chapter on “Interpreting Difficult Issues,” topics related to race, ethnicity, war, violence, immigration, enslavement and class all belong in museums.  Complicated issues or problems can have great resonance for visitors.  These topics are made more tangible and meaningful when you can rely on solid, up-to-date research in crafting your interpretation. 

Stephen G. Hague is currently the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain Ernest Cook Trust Research Student at Linacre College, University of Oxford, England. His research interests center on architecture, material culture, and social history in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world. Previously he worked as executive director of Stenton, a historic house museum in Phila- delphia administered by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He holds a master’s in history from the University of Virginia and a bachelor’s from Binghamton University.

Laura C. Keim is curator of Stenton and Wyck, two house museums located in historic Germantown, as well as a lecturer in historic interiors at Philadelphia University. A graduate of the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, she holds a preservation degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s in art history from Smith College. She has published widely on early American material culture and coauthored Stenton’s interpretive plan.

For the Love of the Small Museum

Why is work in small museums important? Ask any ten museum folks and you’ll probably get ten different answers. One that immediately comes to mind is my own experience—or experiences. More than anything, my love for history and my desire to work in the field was nurtured in my visits to small museums.

I grew up Stuart, a small town in southeast Florida about 100 miles north of Miami. In Stuart I didn’t have access to any museums. But we had one terrific museum, the Elliott Museum. The Elliott was located next to the beach and represented the collections and interests of Stuart resident Harmon Elliott as a tribute to his father Sterling, an inventor and social reformer.[1]

The museum featured themes of innovation and creativity but what always intrigued me was its historical vignettes down a hallway to the right of its entrance door. A barbershop is the one I best remember. I was, and remain, fascinated by the objects in these displays, looking at change over time without really even thinking about the concept. I remember the shoes, the cans on the shelves, and the barber pole. If allowed, I would spend hours looking closely at these exhibits. To some, they were static and boring. To me, they were fascinating and full of possibility.

This was also true down the beach at Stuart’s premier historic site, the House of Refuge—the sole remaining shipwreck life-saving station on the Atlantic coast of Florida. I remember visiting this tiny site and imagining of the life of the Keeper and the shipwrecked sailors who might’ve used its services. And what else could enthrall a young history geek than learning of a something as exciting as the site’s use in WWII as a spotter for German U-boats along the Florida coast!
 

These places were accessible to me and helped cultivate a spirit in me that encouraged an inquisitive spirit, a love for history, and a connection to my community. Small museums across the nation are doing the same thing.

Sometimes our work is crucial because it helps spark an interest in something greater than the sum of its parts. In my case, the community museums I visited as a child inspired a passion for the field of history that continues to this day. It also sparked a career.

So—to paraphrase the great Abigail Adams—“remember the history geeks” as you consider your work and the terrific resources in the Small Museum Toolkit—particularly the content in Book Four – Reaching and Responding to the Audience, Book Five – Interpretation: Education, Programs, and Exhibits, and Book Six – Stewardship: Collections and Historic Preservation. You never know what spark you are lighting.

A “history geek” since elementary school, Bob Beatty is Vice President of Programs for the American Association for State and Local History, a national history organization based in Nashville, Tennessee. Through his work at AASLH, Bob leads a variety of national committees serving the American historical community. From 1999-2007, Bob worked as Curator of Education at the Orange County Regional History Center a $35 million history museum in Orlando, Florida. Bob authored the preface to the Small Museum Toolkit.

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[1] The Elliott is now led by a close colleague of mine Jenny Esler and is in the middle of a project that will result in an entirely new museum. I am not sure that it even qualifies as a small museum anymore.

 

Successful Visitor Service Training

Some quick tips for creating a successful visitor service training program -

Plan a series of meetings with as many of the staff and volunteers as possible throughout the year. Create an open environment where meaningful interaction can take place. Because you are asking everyone to participate and give honest feedback, be sure to set up ground rules for the interactions that will occur during the meetings. State that everyone will have the opportunity to discuss ideas, that the meetings are not a forum for criticizing other staff and volunteers, but they are a way to use visitor, volunteer, and staff feedback and suggestions to improve the institution. The training sessions should be conducted with the same type of respect you would show visitors to the site. In the end, the sessions will be worth any effort that is expended on them.

Think about the interactions from both museum and visitor perspectives. Ask for participants to share experiences they have had with visitors both inside and outside of the institution. Talk about what went well and what didn’t go so well. Encourage honesty without cruelty; talk about interactions, but don’t mock visitors. Everyone needs to vent; we have all had difficult and/or odd visitors and days when we don’t really want to answer any more questions. Assure your staff and volunteers that it is okay to share their frustrations and stressful situations. Venting can lead to new ideas and solutions, but what is said should be kept confidential and as respectful as possible.
      
Good training sessions can be lengthy and mentally exhausting, but they should also be opportunities for growth and social interaction. Emphasize that the things the staff and volunteers learn can be used outside of their jobs and in their personal lives. It is important for the training sessions to be in comfortable and relaxed settings. Your staff and volunteers should receive the same type of consideration as your visitors. They won’t be able to focus on learning if they feel uncomfortable or insecure.

Tamara Hemmerlein was the director of the Montgomery County Cultural Foundation for thirteen years and the Montgomery County Historical Society for eight years. She is now the Hoosier Heritage Alliance coordinator at the Indiana Historical Society. She serves on the American Association of Muse- ums Small Museum Administrators Committee and the American Association for State and Local History Professional Development Committee. She is a Museum Assessment Program peer reviewer and a graduate of the Seminar for Historical Administration.

A Special Kind of Leader: Small Museum Leadership Characteristics

Leadership is leadership, but an argument can be made that being the leader of a small museum requires a special set of leadership characteristics.  Leaders who excel in the small museum environment typically are:

·      Consensus builders.  They are always working with board members and a large group of volunteers with strong feelings about the organization.  The director must be able to listen and find common ground among a wide range of stakeholders.

·      Able to say yes to people when saying no to projects. Small museum leaders know when to listen; he or she can figure out and describe why someone is making an offer and steer that “why” desire to something that better fits the plan and mission.  The director also knows how to put the decision off to dampen the blow and knows how to cite the mission and strategic plan to describe how priorities may not fit.  In the end the small museum leader can say “no” gracefully.

·      Able to make the case for the museum, wherever and whenever. The director has an at-the-ready “elevator speech” and he can share at the grocery store or during a friendly card game. They often carry membership brochures in their glove box and they are always a good ambassador, even when not in total agreement.

·      Frequently changing focus and tasks during the work day. Because small museum leaders wear many hats, they will find themselves shifting from working on a grant request, to interviewing an artifact donor, to presenting at a service club luncheon, to leading a school tour, to meeting with a donor and asking for a major gift. Small museum work is not for you if you can’t be interrupted or must complete a task from start to finish. 

·      Broadly competent museum generalists.  Small museums rarely have ALL the expertise in their volunteers and staff to get every job done - the small museum leader must fill the gaps.  Whether its collections care, exhibits, marketing, facilities maintenance, small museum leaders must be willing to roll up their sleeves and make it happen.

 

We truly believe small museum leaders are special – their skills and energy levels are unrivaled.  Are there other characteristics that we should add to this list?

And, hey, the next time you talk to a small museum director, tell them how awesome they are.

Working in museums for nearly 20 years, Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko has been a museum director since 2001. Cinnamon became CEO of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine in 2009. Before that, she was the director of the General Lew Wallace Study & Museum in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where she led the organization to the National Medal for Museum Service in 2008.

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.

Cinnamon and Stacy are co-editors of the Small Museum Toolkit from AltaMira Press.