Is Your Historic House Museum Sustainable?
In today's economy, simply keeping the doors open can be a challenge for many historic house museums.
AASLH's Historic House Committee realizes the struggles faced by many house museums today and has been working to provide necessary resources to the field for the past several years.
In April 2002, AASLH partnered with the National Trust for Historic Preservation and invited 25 public history and historic house professionals to a two-day meeting to discuss the most challenging issues facing historic houses today. This national think-tank meeting initiated a conversation which has continued in numerous formats across the country, including a session at this year's AASLH conference in Indianapolis asking, "How Sustatinable is Your Historic House Museum?"
The AASLH Historic House Museum Affinity Group Web site has a number of excellent resources available for free to all including:
- Gerald George's article "Historic House Museum Malaise," written as a result from the 2002 historic house museum conference, highlighting this former director of AASLH's views on the field and the conference
- AASLH Technical Leaflet #244: How Sustainable is Your Historic House Museum? Written by the Historic House Museum Affinity Group Committee, this leaflet aims at forestalling the decline in historic house museums in peril and outlining a path back to health and a vigorous future.
- Technical Leaflet Supplemental List of Resources: The committee also assembled a bibliography of resources that museums can use to help them on their path to sustainability. (Many of these resources are available to borrow from the HRC Lending Library).
- Historic House Museum Listserv: Follow the continuing dialogue through the AASLH listserv format.
Visit out the AASLH Historic House Museum Committee page today and check out these and other important resources.
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If you are considering alternatives to historic house museum use, you might want to read my book New Solutions for House Museums: Ensuring the Long Term Preservation of America's Historic Houses published by AltaMira Press in 2007. This book was part AltaMira Press' publishing agreement with the American Association for State and Local History.
There are also two short articles with abstracts of some of my case studies in AASLH's History News in Summer 07 (Article title: New Solutions for House Museums) and in NTHP's Forum Journal in Summer 07 (Article title: New Uses for Existing House Museums). Two book reviews of New Solutions are interesting: Public Historian Summer 2008, page 101, and CRM: THe Journal of Heritage Stewardship, Vol 6 No. 1 Winter 2009, page 71.
The task of keeping museum's open today with increased budget cuts makes it paramount that museum directors know and understand information such as this. Thanks for posting.