Mission statements are required part of non-profit organizations, but I’ve often found that they’re treated like death and taxes–inevitable but you don’t want to think about it. In museums and historic sites, you can tell when they’re particularly useless when you can swap the name of the organization with another and it still makes sense.  Good mission statements are distinctive, memorable, and passionate.  They have to help you make decisions–is this project, activity, donor, or partnership right for us?  They have to go beyond “collect, preserve, and interpret” and describe what you want your audience to “think, feel, and do“.  Creating a good mission statement isn’t easy and examples are hard to come by, so when I find them, I collect them like golden eggs.

Montpelier's new mission statement on the back of a business card.

When I visited James Madison’s Montpelier last week, I learned they adopted a new mission statement.   Developed as part of their strategic planning process by a small team of trustees and staff, it was then shared with the entire board and staff for comment and revision before it was adopted by the board of trustees.  I thought it was so good I wanted to share it as an exemplar:

Our mission is to inspire continuing public engagement with American constitutional self-government by bringing to life the home and contributions of James and Dolley Madison.

Yes, there’s a bit of jargon that requires some explanation but it’s so much better than the previous one:

The Montpelier Foundation preserves the legacy of James Madison, his family, and
Montpelier’s plantation community, and seeks to inspire an understanding and
commitment to the ideals of the Constitution as the first successful form of self
governance to secure liberty for its citizens. The Foundation’s mission is founded on
the fact that the Constitution is a landmark in the history of mankind’s quest to achieve
freedom. James Madison, the individual most responsible for the Constitution,
provided both the innovative ideas central to its success and the leadership that
brought about its creation and ratification.

Yikes.  Try to fit that on the back of a business card.

Michael Quinn

H.F. (Gerry) Lenfest, chairman of the American Revolution Center today announced that Michael C. Quinn will join the organization as president and CEO effective April 1, 2012. Quinn will oversee all aspects of the development of The Museum of the American Revolution, to be built in the historic area of Philadelphia.

Since 1999, Quinn has served as president and CEO of The Montpelier Foundation, the private non-profit organization that operates James Madison’s Montpelier, a National Trust Historic Site in Virginia. Under his leadership, the home of James Madison and its surrounding environment were transformed from a 1900s mansion into a vibrant interpretive and educational center focusing on James Madison and the U.S. Constitution. He oversaw the $25 million restoration of James Madison’s home, and the planning and construction of a 15,000 square foot visitor center. He conceived and oversaw the establishment of the Center for the Constitution, which annually provides advanced intellectual seminars on constitutional theory for more than 700 teachers, police officers, and legislators.

Previously, Quinn served as deputy director at Mt. Vernon’s Ladies Association where he was responsible for on-site interpretation, educational programs, special events, marketing, public relations, and publications. He also served as executive director of the D.C. Preservation League and as a preservation planner for the U.S. Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. Quinn received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia, a Master of Arts from Yale University, and a Master of Business Administration from George Mason University. He will be moving to Philadelphia with his wife, Carolyn.

“Mike Quinn has a strong background in the founding history of this Nation that makes him uniquely suited to lead The American Revolution Center during this exciting time.” said Lenfest. “Working together with our Board, he will lead us to the successful opening of The Museum of the American Revolution–the Nation’s first museum to tell the entire story of the American Revolution.”

Quinn commented, “I am honored to help The American Revolution Center achieve its ambitious goals. Its mission–to engage the public in the history and significance of the American Revolution-is one of the most urgent imperatives of every generation. The concepts of individual liberty and popular self-governance were forged and tested in the Revolution, and have sustained us as a Nation. The ideals of the American Revolution still define the American people, and must be understood and upheld by every individual for the nation to thrive.”

About The American Revolution Center

The American Revolution Center is a non-partisan, not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to engaging the public in the history and enduring legacy of the American Revolution. The American Revolution Center owns a distinguished collection of objects, artifacts and manuscripts, and is working to establish a living memorial to the American Revolution–The Museum of the American Revolution. For more information,  visit the Center’s website at AmericanRevolutionCenter.org.

Click to view slideshow.
James Madison’s Montpelier in Virginia sports some very attractive interpretive signs that looked so good, I had to figure out how they were made. With a bit of prodding and poking, I discovered they were printed plastic attached with Velcro to a sturdy wooden frame.  Very clever!  The signs are great looking even after a couple years outside.

Peggy Vaughan, Vice President of Communications and Visitor Services, generously shared that the three signs cost about $900 total:  $90 for each 30″x 40″ PVC sign and $210 for each base. The content, design, and bases were created in-house (yes, Montpelier is fortunate to have a graphic designer and master carpenters on staff) and the signs were printed by FedEx Office (formerly Kinkos). This sign was created using Adobe Indesign, saved as a pdf, and printed directly on PVC–the image isn’t as sharp but they last longer outdoors than the alternative method of laminating a printed image onto PVC. Peggy said that, “The big advantage to these signs for us was that they are relatively cheap, and because everything around here is always changing, we did not want to spend $2,000 on a proper museum sign, as we had in the past, that would be out of date before it wore out. And, frankly, even if things don’t change at your museum, your messaging should change from time-to-time to keep up, don’t you think?”

If you’re looking for more ideas for signs at historic sites, I’ve collected more than 200 images of places around the world on a web album at http://bit.ly/JdsE8v.

"To Keep Your Customers, Keep it Simple" by Patrick Spenner and Karen Freeman (Harvard Business Review, May 2012)

The May 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review arrived a little early to my mailbox, but I couldn’t stop from sharing a great article on engaging customers in business world that can easily be translated to engaging visitors and building support for historic sites and museums.  In “To Keep Your Customers, Keep It Simple,” Patrick Spenner and Karen Freeman note the paradox of today’s promotional techniques:

Companies have ramped up their messaging, expecting that the more interaction and information they provide, the better the chances of holding on to these increasingly distracted and disloyal customers.  But for many consumers, the rising volume of marketing messages isn’t empowering–it’s overwhelming.  Rather than pulling customers into the fold, marketers are pushing them away with relentless and ill-conceived efforts to engage.

This conclusion is based on multiple surveys of more than 7,000 consumers which were then compared to interviews with 200 marketing executives representing 125 brands.  Their pointed out that what consumers what and what companies think consumers want didn’t correspond to each other, or in biz speak, it’s a “product/market misalignment“.  Visitor researcher Conny Graft has demonstrated the same state of affairs at museums and historic sites when she pops up a slide showing a list of needs by school teachers compared to a list of the museum staff’s perceived needs of school teachers.  The priorities are nearly opposite of each other.  It’s not uncommon for museums to misjudge what visitors or members want.

What Consumers Really Want vs. What Business Believe that Consumers Want

Spenner and Freeman state that the more the market and product are aligned, the more “sticky” it becomes.  In our parlance, the greater the overlap between what a visitor wants and what the historic site offers, the more engaging and relevant the visitor experience becomes.  According to their research, “the single biggest single driver of stickiness, by far, was decision simplicity–the ease with which consumers can gather trustworthy information about a product and confidently and efficiently weigh their purchase options.”  Therefore attempts to provide more information about your site, more choices of activities and events, long lists of member benefits, and lengthy histories work against a visitor’s desire to gather information quickly, evaluate its reliability, and then weigh the alternatives to decide whether to visit or not.  The article provides an example from Crest’s website, which details 35 types of toothpaste which can be sorted by such “benefits” as “flavor experience,” “fresh breath,” and “dentist-inspired.”   As they state, “buying guides of this sort make the mistake of appearing to offer guidance while actually complicating the decision process.”  This corresponds to visitor research at James Madison’s Montpelier, where Randi Korn discovered that visitors didn’t want a lot of options, such as an African American history tour, an audio tour of the landscape, and a cooking demonstration.  They had a whole day of activities planned, including shopping on Main Street and a visit to a winery, and they only had a couple hours for Montpelier, so they wanted a solid introductory experience that included as much as possible in the time available.  I recall having the same overwhelming experience at Colonial Williamsburg when I wanted to buy a ticket at the Visitor Center–far too many options that prompted me to pull out a calculator to make a decision.  Is that really what we want visitors to do?  That may be hard for curators and educators to hear, but save those additional experiences for special events or return visits.

The article provides three tactics for improving ‘decision simplicity’ by

• aiding navigation.  I’m not sure why, but historic sites are notoriously bad at this.  It’s typically hard to find them, signs are small and poorly maintained, the house’s front door is not the entrance, they typically tell me what not to do, I’m not sure where to park or know what to do when I arrive.  Websites are often not much better:  compare the Rosie the Riverter Trust with the Rosie the Riverter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park.
• building trust.  Thelen and Rosensweig’s research showed that museums and historic sites have this in spades, so we’re doing great here (we just need to keep it that way!).
• making it easier to weigh options.  And this varies site by site, but I do notice a tendency to provide far too much information, an instinctual habit to tell you about all the great things about the history of a site, family, or event, and became fodder for Pee Wee Herman’s Great Adventure (“there are a thousand uses for corn, and let me tell you about every one of them…”).

If you’re looking to make your visitor experience more “sticky,” you’ll find “To Keep Your Customers, Keep it Simple” very helpful for evaluating the promotion of your site but if you’re looking at making your interpretation more engaging, Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath offers a useful outside perspective.

BTW:  The images in this article were created using my Droid 3 smartphone using an application called Handy Scanner.  Taking a photo with a smartphone is no big deal, but Handy Scanner allows me to photograph multiple pages, crop and enhance them, convert them to pdfs or jpgs, and then send via email or upload to my Dropbox.  It’s much faster and easier than warming up my flatbed scanner–and it’s free!  I’ve been using it to copy and send excerpts from books or signed documents (goodbye fax machine!).

The rich red clay at Montpelier, the Virginia home of the Father of the Constitution has given up more secrets: the remnants of James Madison’s barn and threshing machine, and evidence that Dolley’s son destroyed both in an attempt to remove the machine from Montpelier before the new owner took possession.

As archaeologists excavated the field slave quarters this summer, they found perplexing evidence they had to research and decipher. First, they found bits of iron that appeared to be pieces of machinery, which indicated that the building was used to house farming equipment. Then, in the soil layers below the iron pieces, they found a trench, which proved to be the outline of a 16-foot x 16-foot building. The trench also contained a set of postholes that held more iron pieces. “The iron and postholes in the trench tell us that the building was modified to allow a piece of machinery to be mounted inside the building,” said Dr. Matthew Reeves, Montpelier director of archaeology and landscape restoration.

More digging revealed bits of bone and ceramics, which indicate that the building was used as housing for the slaves who worked Montpelier’s fields. Digging still further, archaeologists discovered a central fire pit within the building outline that suggested the building was originally used as a tobacco house to smoke-cure tobacco from the nearby fields.

These discoveries reveal that this one building was designed as a tobacco smokehouse, later used as field slave quarters, and finally modified for use as a threshing house for the Montpelier plantation. The changing purpose of this building mirrors some of the larger changes at Montpelier when Madison expanded from hand-cultivated tobacco crops to include a mix of plowed-based grain crops in the late 1790s.

The discovered iron proved even more as fascinating. The iron pieces turned out to be “teeth” from a threshing machine, a device used to separate harvested wheat from chaff. Initially, archaeologists believed the pieces came from the period after the widowed Dolley Madison sold Montpelier. However, closer examination revealed that the pieces were hand-made and date to the late 1700s, and not the post-Madison era. Extant letters reveal that James Madison owned a threshing machine as early as the late1790s. In one letter, Madison excitedly implored his friend Thomas Jefferson to visit Montpelier to see his new machine designed on plans devised by Thomas C. Martin. The number of broken teeth found at the site indicate the machine was well used for a long period of time.

As Montpelier’s archaeologists and researchers pondered the significance of these discoveries, they encountered an excerpt from a court document, which indicated that Henry Moncure, who bought Montpelier from Dolley Madison, had sued John Payne Todd (her son and James Madison’s step-son). The documents state that Payne Todd had tried to remove a threshing machine and barn from Montpelier after it had been sold to Moncure, and that he was only prevented from doing so by being caught in the act by Moncure himself. Todd was also accused of not vacating the property after the sale.

“As against the defendant John P. Todd, this defendant has other just causes of complaint, not before [admitted] to in this answer. He [retained] possession of the land conveyed by the deed of the 1st of August 1844 long after it should have been surrendered; [removed] between the time of the sale and of giving up possession a [handsome enclosure], whereby not only the value thereof was lost but the property greatly injured by exposure; [removed] from the premises in the same interval a neat newly framed building; and [pulled] to [pieces], for the purpose of carrying the same away a wheat machine which was a [fixture] to the barn, and was only [prevented] from [removing] the same by the arrival of this defendant on the premisis [sic] just at the moment when the [removal] was about to be [effected]. It was then left but so injured as to have been of no use since.”

Had archaeologists discovered the very barn? Was this the same threshing machine Todd had tried to steal? The final demise of the structure noted in the 1844 court document closely matches the deposits found at the site, and archaeologists are inclined to think it is.

Archaeologists discovered the pieces of the machine during a multi-year effort to investigate the daily lives of the many enslaved individuals who, for generations, made their homes at Montpelier. In addition to the field slave quarters, archaeologists excavated the South Yard, where the domestic slaves lived and worked; and the Stable Quarter, where enslaved craftsmen lived and worked. Visitors can now see these discoveries in the Montpelier archaeology lab, which is open daily, 9:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.

This project is supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities,  Perry Foundation, Inc., National Trust Historic Sites Fund, James Madison University, State University of New York at Plattsburgh and several generous individuals.

Kat Imhoff at James Madison’s Montpelier.

The Montpelier Foundation has appointed Katherine L. “Kat” Imhoff as president effective January 1, 2013.  The Foundation manages James Madison’s Montpelier, where Madison was born, developed his ideas for the Constitution, and retired after his presidency.  Imhoff returns to Virginia after a successful five-year tenure as State Director for The Nature Conservancy in Montana, where she led the organization’s Montana Legacy Project – the purchase of more than 300,000 acres for nearly $500 million – representing the largest conservation project ever undertaken by The Nature Conservancy.

“Montpelier is a place for making authentic, tangible connections with the past that can inspire us to build on James Madison’s legacy of constitutional self-government,” said Gregory May, Chairman of The Montpelier Foundation. “Kat Imhoff is a respected preservationist with demonstrated ability to generate support for visionary advances like those Montpelier now is prepared to undertake.”

Before she went to Montana, Imhoff was Chief Operating Officer and Vice President of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, heading special initiatives and leading the team that created the new Visitors Center. She also has served as Executive Director of the Preservation Alliance of Virginia, Chair of the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, Chair of The Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership, and Vice President of the Piedmont Environmental Council. Imhoff earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the University of Virginia School of Architecture.

“I come to Montpelier inspired by the possibilities and potential of this landscape,” said Kat Imhoff, incoming President of Montpelier. “Montpelier is a source of many narratives concerning our past, present and future. The intellectual legacy of James Madison, brought to life in the house and across the Landmark Forest, gardens and grounds, continues to fuel our imagination and passion as Americans. It is an honor to be offered the opportunity to lead such an inspirational institution, especially with a Board and staff committed to step forward with vigor and creativity.”

Imhoff, who led a team of more than 60 full-time and seasonal employees at The Nature Conservancy, will assume the leadership of Montpelier from Sean T. O’Brien, who served in an interim capacity after Michael Quinn, the previous president, became CEO of the American Revolution Center in Philadelphia. O’Brien will continue in his role as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer.

Imhoff’s arrival also prompts immediate comparisons to the varied hiring decisions at major hisitoric sites at Mt. Vernon (which recently hired an MBA well outside the history and museum field as president) and the National Trust for Historic Preservation (which has 27 historic sites and hired an MBA with peripheral experience in preservation and historic sites).

Last Friday I was in Virginia and thought I’d share what’s been happening at James Madison’s Montpelier and Belle Grove, two historic sites that I’ve been associated with for more than a decade.  

The day started with a meeting of the Interiors and Interpretation Committee at James Madison’s Montpelier to see the most recently restored rooms at the mansion, advise them on the next phase of work, and to meet Kat Imhoff, the new president of the Montpelier Foundation.  The committee hasn’t met for a couple years so I was particularly anxious to see what’s been happening at this nationally significant site.  The drawing room, dining room, new library, and James Madison’s office are furnished (or nearly so) and with revisions to the tour, it’s a dramatically different visitor experience.  If you haven’t been there in a couple years, it’s well worth another visit.  I enjoy participating as a committee member because Montpelier gives me the unique privilege of staying overnight on site (not in the mansion, alas, but in a nicely updated house in the Constitutional Village).  Even better are the people I work with when I visit–passionate and enthusiastic colleagues who are among the best in their fields.  This meeting included Conny Graft, Betty Monkman, Gail Serfaty, David Mattern, and Robert Leath and to give you a glimpse of their fervor, one of the committee members brought an undiscovered Madison letter that descended through her family and we stayed up until midnight (at least that’s when I went to bed) to discuss and analyze it.  

In the evening, I stopped by Belle Grove in Middletown on the way home to congratulate Elizabeth McClung on her retirement.  Their board of trustees hosted a well deserved celebratory party with lots of speeches, food, and wine.  Elizabeth has served for 17 years at the helm of this historic site, making tremendous strides in preservation and interpretation to make it a major point of pride in the community.  She helped create the Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park, launched new research initiatives on African American and women’s history, acquired extremely important family portraits and adjacent land parcels, fought bloody preservation battles in the Shenandoah Valley, revised the website, authentically restored the parlor and dining room, and raised LOTS of money (those are just the things I’m aware of from my distant view!).  Her last major project was the rehabilitation of an early 20th century barn for educational activities and while funds still need to be raised for the exhibits, 4274 Design Workshop unveiled a new model of Belle Grove as it appeared in 1820.

It was an incredibly full and fun day visiting these two historic sites, and because I was mostly traveling the Virginia countryside, a great day of driving on a beautiful day as well.

At a recent board meeting of the Montpelier Foundation, the organization that manages James Madison’s Montpelier, I discovered they had developed a nice device to keep table tents neat.  I often create table tents or nameplates on my computer, folding a letter-sized sheet in half.  Despite using cover stock to give them some heft, they still manage to sag and wilt, not only making them hard to read but creating a sad-looking appearance for a meeting.

Montpelier tapered a small block of wood to fit within the table tent, attaching a short brass screw at the back.  Using a small “super-strong” magnet, the table tent sticks to the screw on the block.  Everything looks sharp for the meeting and the blocks can be easily reused (and they never break, even if you drop them).  Another great idea from the carpenters at Montpelier.

In this 34-second time-lapse video, James Madison’s Montpelier in Virginia constructs a log “field quarter” (a dwelling for enslaved field workers).  It’s first constructed in a building to cut and fit all the pieces in a protected place during winter, then re-assembled in the field on a beautiful spring day in 2015.  It’s now on the exact spot where the foundations for a house were uncovered through archaeology (if you look carefully to the horizon on the left, you’ll see the Visitor Center).

Montpelier is in the midst of reconstructing many of the lost buildings associated with the enslaved African community, using archaeological and documentary evidence assembled over the past decade.  Their major project is the South Yard, six buildings next to the Madison’s mansion, which will be completed in the next few years, thanks to a generous gift from David Rubenstein.

James Madison’s Montpelier is in the midst of expanding its interpretation of slavery thanks to a generous gift from David Rubenstein.  To explore potential interpretive techniques and content that could be adopted, we conducted a three-day research trip to visit a wide range of sites in Louisiana. Staff had visited most of the sites in Virginia, and so we sought a location that most of us had not visited but had a large concentration of historic sites that interpreted African American history before emancipation. Because the experience helped us question assumptions, think more deeply about outcomes, and expand our catalog of ideas, I’m sharing our itinerary with you to encourage you to visit. Our research trip started with two days to make a big loop through Baton Rouge and New Iberia to visit several historic sites and finished with a day in New Orleans. In future blog posts, I hope to discuss some of the sites in more detail.

Day 1: Whitney Plantation, Laura Plantation, and Oak Alley.  Our initial plans also included Evergreen Plantation but the timing didn’t work out, even though these sites are within ten miles of each other.

Day 2: West Baton Rouge Museum in Port Allen (near Baton Rouge) and Shadows-on-the-Teche in New Iberia.

Day 3: Walking tour of African life in the French Quarter with Hidden History Tours and a visit to the sprawling National World War II Museum (formerly called the D-Day Museum).

The itinerary is ambitious and doesn’t allow much time for lingering, but it was a rich diversity of sites and interpretive experiences that I can easily recommend to others. Our complete itinerary is available with more details (including some places we weren’t able to visit but were good candidates). Thanks especially to Ashley Rogers at Whitney Plantation, Julia Rose at the West Baton Rouge Museum, and Pat Kahle at Shadows on the Teche for their hospitality.

On Monday, June 5, James Madison’s Montpelier in Virginia opens “The Mere Distinction of Colour,” a major exhibition on the history and impact of slavery in the United States. It examines slavery both from the perspective of James Madison and his peers as well as from the 300 men, women, and children enslaved by the Madisons at Montpelier. It’s a complex and difficult story, but Montpelier has been researching and interpreting this topic for nearly 20 years. Thanks to a generous $10 million gift from David Rubenstein (co-founder and co-CEO of The Carlyle Group), that effort will be move to a higher level in this path-breaking exhibition. During the past two years, the museum staff worked closely with Proun Design, Northern Light Productions, and Mystic Scenic Studios to design, fabricate, and install the exhibition.

As an advisor and consultant to Montpelier for nearly fifteen years, I’ve watched its interpretation evolve. This exhibition is a major step forward for them and for historic sites who are interpreting slavery. Rather than simply discuss the hard and oppressive life of slaves (“working outside is hot,” “they slept in small cabins”) and the dull recounting of dates and statistics (e.g., average number of slaves on a farm), Montpelier’s exhibition explores the inhumanity of slavery and the humanity of enslaved people, as well as the impact of slavery on daily life and impact of the US Constitution (Madison’s major legacy) on slavery. Furthermore, the exhibition goes past emancipation and discusses it’s ongoing legacy, whereas most historic sites conclude African American history with the Civil War. You’ll get a strong sense of this approach in their exhibition overview and an accompanying online resource that explains six ways that understanding slavery will change how you understand American freedom.

Interpretive planning workshop at Montpelier, February 2017.

There are a lot of ingredients that made this level of interpretive success possible.  I may be speaking prematurely because I haven’t seen the reaction from the public or other professionals (and some parts will be controversial), but some of the aspects that stand out are:

1. Value diverse expertise and perspectives.  Compared to most historic sites, Montpelier has a large staff and this provides them the opportunity to gather diverse expertise, such as education, archaeology, history, political science, communications, and historic preservation.  This ensured multiple perspectives on the project so they could think bigger than they could as individuals, although it can slow down the process and result in conflicts. Many organizations want to avoid this, thus tend to work with people who think the same and agree with each other. This ultimately results in either bland thinking or blind spots. Working with diverse perspectives is challenging, but facilitation skills can help tremendously (see Secrets of Facilitation by Michael Wilkinson and Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making by Sam Kaner).
2. Go beyond existing knowledge to expand thinking and perspectives. Staff frequently attend professional conferences and visit other historic sites to learn what works (and what doesn’t). They regularly invited people outside the organization to explore and test ideas, including scholars, experts, colleagues, consultants, visitors, and descendants (descendants are perhaps unique to historic sites, which have a history of residents). This is tough because it exposes the organization to criticism and feels like you’re displaying your weaknesses, but it also encourages the organization to continually improve and stay at the leading edge.
3. Pursue a long-term vision and engage in long-range planning. Montpelier’s mission is bland and monochromatic, but what seemed to propel it forward were big goals and clear expectations. We often had to make these explicit and there wasn’t always agreement, but in the right hands (that is, the CEO and key staff and board members), it made a tremendous difference for gaining momentum. Every organization needs a mission, but I increasingly find that they only serve as the “guardrails on the highway”. Vision provides a destination and indeed, it provided the motivation for Rubenstein’s gift.  Planning helps you figure out how to achieve the vision. Notice that I didn’t say “plan”? The process may be more important than the product. Montpelier doesn’t have an interpretive plan but we’ve been planning for years, establishing policies and principles that allow future decisions to be made more quickly and easily.

I can’t wait to see the exhibition for myself when I visit Montpelier again this summer. In the meantime, if you visit, please share your reactions and thoughts in the comments below.

Educators and interpreters are increasingly expected to engage the community to build support, attract audiences, and confront contemporary issues. So how do you get started? What does an effective community engagement project look like? How do you maintain it?

On Thursday, September 7, 11:00 am – 12:15 pm at the AASLH Annual Meeting in Austin, I’ll be moderating a session that will bring together three projects—Haymarket Project in Boston, James Madison’s Montpelier in Virginia, and El Pueblo History Museum in Colorado—to discover how they successfully engaged three different audiences in the local community—immigrants, African American descendants, and Latina teenage girls.  Joining me will be Ken Turino (Historic New England), Christian Cotz (James Madison’s Montpelier), and Dawn DiPrince (History Colorado).  Based on their experiences and with contributions from the audience, we will create a list of practical advice and guidance for community engagement projects that could form the basis of best and future practices for the history field.

This session is a follow-up to a 2012 session on community engagement at the AASLH Annual Meeting with Deborah Schwartz (Brooklyn Historical Society) and Lorraine McConaghy (Museum of History and Industry), which drafted a list of best practices. We’ll see how much our thinking has evolved in the last five years when we develop our new list (and I’ll share it on this blog for more comments).

Can’t attend in Austin? AASLH is also offering this session as part of their online conference.  It’ll be a separate online presentation broadcast live, so you can ask questions plus the recordings are available for six months so you can watch it later. This year, AASLH expanded the definition of “group” so if your state or local association has registered, everyone in that group can participate wherever they are located (but it’s a lot more fun to watch these presentations together because you can share ideas).

A year ago, James Madison’s Montpelier invited me to the National Summit on Teaching Slavery to create a “methodology for how public historians work with descendants” (program, 6 Mb pdf). Over a long weekend, fifty people from across the country with a wide range of experiences and perspectives worked in small groups to define and prioritize standards and best practices for interpretation, research, and involving the descendant community. It builds upon Montpelier’s award-winning exhibition, A Mere Distinction of Colour, to help “Americans of all types truly understand the ongoing struggle for freedom, rights, and equality in our nation.” The National Council on Public History recently posted a nice series of discussions on the exhibition with students in the Cooperstown Graduate Program.

One of the major challenges was determining what is distinctive about teaching slavery from interpreting other topics, such as women or Asians. At first, the discussions identified practices that had already been figured out years ago by the American Historical Association and the National Association for Interpretation, but that was to be expected because many participants had little experience in scholarship or interpretation–what bound us together was improving and enhancing the interpretation of slavery at museums and historic sites. Although the rehash of these professional practices was frustrating and I wondered why we were going over old ground, it eventually dawned on me that while these practices may be long-established, they are not well-established. Our visitors may not be museum professionals or academic scholars, but they can sense something is missing when they visit historic sites and house museums. We still have a lot of work to do.

Draft rubric on interpretation from the National Summit on Teaching Slavery, February 2018.

More interesting was the discussion on race. Although participants agreed that race is a man-made construct and thus can be deconstructed, the group wasn’t ready to go there. Instead, they preferred to use equitable, inclusive, and multi-dimensional. Because race has been a fundamental way of explaining differences in people for centuries in the US, explaining it as a social construction upsets our basic sense of the world. If you’re not familiar with it, check out the articles in Scientific American and National Geographic. Even though this convening on the teaching of slavery could easily discuss racism and its consequences during the weekend gathering, confronting race and racism as a standard practice in the museum field was too difficult.

In the fall of 2019, James Madison’s Montpelier issued the final product from this summit: “Engaging Descendant Communities in the Interpretation of Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites“.  I’m so pleased that it focused on the engagement of descendant communities because it pushes the field to the next level of performance. If it had tackled the interpretation of slavery, it would have simply echoed what has been said for the past two decades by others (to get a sense of this, check out the bibliography on interpreting African American history and culture). It also aligns with other efforts in our field to promote inclusion and equity, as mentioned in the introduction:

“Engaging descendants of enslaved communities forms a critical component of the rubric. Empowering descendant voices challenges the public to consider their points of view, which until very recently have been marginalized from the dominant historical narratives offered in classrooms, textbooks, museums, and historic sites…We hope that this rubric is viewed and utilized as a foundation upon which to construct richer, more diverse narratives that bring people to better understand the lived experience of slavery and its legacy, as well as to highlight examples of perseverance that carry descendants legacies into the future.”

Along with describing performance levels from unsatisfactory to exemplary on topics of multi-disciplinary research, relationship building with descendant communities, and interpretation, it provides a thoughtful essay by Michael Blakey at the College of William and Mary.  As he points out, the rubric:

“seeks to enable an authentic dialogue about the past in a plural democracy in which descendants have a specific right to be heard and to benefit equitably from sites of their history, long denied them….One hopes that given this clear road map, sites and the professions who run them, will proceed to the locations of shared power and voice with descendants. These are the locations of the democratization of knowledge, broad public interest, empathy, and growing markets….Perhaps our future best interpretations of the past will not come by the easiest process, but they will be our responsibility.”

Indeed, the rubric increases the responsibilities for the interpretation of slavery at history museums and historic sites.  And like most standards and practices, they are continually evolving and eventually, my hope is that what is now considered “exemplary” will be considered “basic”–and we can eventually confront the social construction of race.