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.

For the Love of the Small Museum: Propose Conference Sessions

Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko was the plenary speaker on Feb. 22 at the 2012 Small Museum Association Conference in Ocean City, Maryland. Below is an excerpt from her speech entitled “For the Love of the Small Museum: The Making of the Small Museum Toolkit,” where she reminds us about the importance of not only attending conferences, but of bringing the small museum voice to conference panels.

“Small museum people like you can do more to promote a dialogue. Time and again I have sat on conference program committees looking, searching for, and not finding many session proposals from small museum leaders. These are few and far between. More often, panelists from larger museums will propose a session that focuses on nuts-and-bolts work, and because of its basic topic, it’s touted as being for the small museum audience. And there’s no one on the panel who works in a small museum. ALL museum practitioners benefit from nuts-and-bolts sessions from time to time. This is not a “small museum thing;” this is a “continuing education thing.”

Advocacy groups, like AAM’s Small Museum Administrators Committee and AASLH’s Small Museums Committee, work hard to ensure conferences provide ample opportunities for small museum attendees. But I can tell you that too few of you are providing the proposals.

What the museum field needs are more session proposals from small museum practitioners sharing case studies, best practice strategies, and overall museum excellence with panels of colleagues from small, medium, and large museums. This will change the mistaken – and certainly short-sighted – perception that Steve Friesen, from the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave, writes about in Chapter 1 of Book 1 of the Small Museum Toolkit:

“To many people a small museum is a museum that has too little money, too few staff, too small facilities, and even too little knowledge. This negative approach to the small museum brings with it a stereotype that the small museum is a place that is somehow incomplete or needs desperately to learn from big museums.”

Your participation in conference panels will focus attention on small museums in the best light. Yes, money is tight; it is for everyone. But please, find a way to attend AAM or AASLH (or both) each year and be a session chair or panelist. Maybe hatch a plan with some of your closest museum colleagues to take turns attending these conferences. Apply for scholarships. Get grant funding to attend. Many of you already attend, and I’m glad you do, but the small museum field needs you to prepare session proposals and show our colleagues how awesome we all are.

What will we get in return? More seats at the table, as we talk about the museum community’s future. More resources shared with us by our museum peers and awarded to us through grants. More visitors to our museums, allowing our missions to spread more broadly and deeply across America. This is our highest purpose and the reason why we do the work we do.”

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. She is co-editor of the recently released Small Museum Toolkit from AltaMira Press.

When to CAP – is now the right time?

You just learned about the Conservation Assessment Program (CAP) from a colleague, from a session at a museum association meeting, or possibly even from the Small Museums Toolkit. It sounds like a great way to receive conservation advice for your museum, and you can't wait to apply! But is it the right time?

Although Heritage Preservation strives to make the CAP assessment process as easy and effortless as possible, museum staff should know that CAP assessments require a time investment. The entire CAP timeframe spans 12-18 months, start to finish. From interviewing assessors, to supervising the site visit, to reviewing the final report, the museum has work to do towards their CAP, and should ensure that the person in charge of the CAP at the museum has ample time to do this work.

The Small Museums Toolkit, Book 1: Leadership, Mission, and Governance, chapter 1 has some good advice about appropriate times to embark on a CAP assessment. Here's a short list of times NOT to attempt a CAP:

1. When the curator or director position is about to turn over. Nothing disrupts an assessment more than having it started by one staff member and finished by another.
2. Before the museum is open and offering regular services to the public. Per CAP's eligibility requirements, assessments can only be granted to museums that were open for at least 90 days in the preceding year.
3. If the museum has a staff of one or two people, don't apply for CAP when major events are about to occur in the lives of one of the staff members. Whether you're finally having that knee surgery, helping plan a child's (or your own) wedding, or your dog is having major health problems, these life events can (and have) understandably diverted small museum staff members' attention away from their CAP assessment. This can lead to delayed site visits, reports being reviewed and returned to assessors late, and ultimately a final report that is disjointed, out-of-date, and unhelpful to the museum.

The CAP staff hopes that all eligible small museums in the U.S. will at some point apply for CAP. To make sure that the assessment is as impactful and helpful as possible, apply for CAP when both you and your institution are the most ready for it.

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.

Catlin-Legutko Speaking at SMA Conference

Small museums and their employees and volunteers are a wonder and clearly attendees of the Small Museum Association conference know this. Right? Perhaps you need to be reminded why you rock.

Join me for the plenary session, For the Love of the Small Museum: The Making of the Small Museum Toolkit, on Tuesday, February 21 from 8:30 – 9:20 to hear why your work matters, what the museum community can learn from what you do, and how the Small Museum Toolkit was inspired by you, the small museum champion.

Conceived during a marathon road trip to two back-to-back museum conferences, my co-editor, Stacy Klingler and I, tackled a dream to produce practical how-to resources for our over-worked small museum colleagues. Partnering with dozens of authors, whose writings are spread over six books, the Small Museum Toolkit was published by Altamira Press last month.

During my talk, I hope to challenge you, motivate you, and celebrate you; preparing you to return to your fabulous small museum with a focused and energized agenda.

Following the plenary, I will lead an informal conversation or "fireside chat," titled Big Ideas in Small Museums: A Conversation about Moving Mountains. Session participants are encouraged to connect with colleagues and talk about the burning issues and solutions they may have that can improve the small museum environment. Discussions will focus around the importance of assessment, planning, fundraising and board development.

See you there!

For more information about SMA and the conference, visit www.smallmuseum.org.

Some Facts About Fundraising

There are a few well-proven facts that board members and staff need to understand as you evaluate and plan for current and future fundraising, or development, efforts, e.g., membership, annual fund, capital and endowment campaigns, planned giving, and major gifts.

*Individual giving is the cornerstone of nonprofit annual and major giving. In 2009, 75% of the charitable gifts to nonprofit organizations came from individual donors, with only 13% coming from foundations, another 8% from bequests, and 4% from corporations[i].
*Of the total giving in 2009, only 4% went to Arts, Culture, and Humanities (this is the sector where museums and history organization show up). The largest sector, religion, received 33% of the contributions. Of particular note, Education is second at 13%.[ii] The more connected you are with K-12 education, the more eligible you are for a bigger piece of the funding pie.
*On average, 80% of the dollars comes from 20% of your donor base; the reverse is true as well. As a result, both groups require your attention, but in different ways.
*It’s a very rare gift that is a large first gift. With caring stewardship combined with appropriate solicitation methods, identifiable segments of the membership base will move up the donor ladder toward larger and larger gifts. This process is a natural progression – a continuum – for our solicitation efforts and our donors.
*Donors must be an involved constituency and care about the service you provide.
*The board must be the vanguard of those supporting the Museum. They must have 100% participation in the giving program at the highest level they can each support. Major gifts usually come in large part from the board and their relationships.

It is also important to note that diversified income streams are critical to the sustainability of any organization. If one revenue source is negatively impacted by external or internal forces, then the others can pick up the slack in a given budget cycle.

Because individuals are 75% of the charitable giving pool, the Toolkit chapter, titled “Fearless Fundraising: A Roadmap for Kick-Starting Your Development Program,” by Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko, focuses primarily on practical approaches to asking individuals to donate.

[i]“The Annual Report on Philanthropy for 2009,” Giving USA, accessed June 8, 2011, http://www.pursuantmedia.com/givingusa/0510/export/GivingUSA_2010_ExecSummary_Print.pdf
[ii] “The Annual Report on Philanthropy for 2009.”