The HRC thanks Amanda C. Burdan for serving as guest author for the following entry. Amanda is the George B. Tatum Curatorial Fellow at the Florence Griswold Museum. She recently curated the exhibitions "Sewell Sillman: Pushing Limits" as well as "The Road Less Traveled: Thomas Nason's Rural New England." As the Museum's scholar-in-residence, Amanda teaches the Museum's popular Winter Studies courses and researches the Museum's collections, presenting findings in both exhibition catalogues and lively gallery talks. Amanda earned a Ph.D. in the History of Art and Architecture from Brown University and has previously held positions with Connecticut College, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, RISD Museum, and Kutztown University of Pennsylvania.

"Once Upon a Time in the Land of Old Lyme..." or Museum Adventures in Faerie-Land

Last October, the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut, conjured a public program that increased attendance by 662% over the course of three weeks. An experiment of sorts, the Museum's Wee Faerie Village asked nearly three dozen artists, designers, landscapers and others to create little faerie dwellings that were tucked into the nooks and crannies of the Museum's nearly twelve acres of riverfront gardens. Each faerie was to be the muse of one of the historic artists affiliated with the Lyme Art Colony, the core interpretive story of the Museum. In reality, it was more than just faeries that brought these record number crowds to the Museum.

The Wee Faerie Village concept was created by Director of Education David D.J. Rau in response to Museum Director Jeff Andersen's request to come up with a way for the public to explore the whole of the 11-acre grounds during the Museum's "Year of the American Landscape" initiative. The Museum used this outdoor event as a way to test the waters for a family-friendly initiative, learning some lessons about promoting this kind of event along the way.

Lesson One: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words:

Instead of waiting for the event to be up and ready to be photographed, we worked with a professional photographer who went to the artists' studios to get photographs of the faerie dwellings as they were being built. This collection of great images allowed the Museum to meet the deadlines of magazines weeks before the actual event began.

Lesson Two: Social Media Works:

The Museum used a range of social media as a way to generate good word of mouth (or is it mouse?). The Museum reported interesting developments of the Wee Faerie Village on its Facebook page, posted images to Flickr, and several participants blogged about their particular roles. Each of these lessons proved successful in the end.

After the glitter settled, Rau wrote a report on the Wee Faerie Project, "Enchanting Museum Education: The Wee Faerie Village at the Florence Griswold Museum," and submitted it to the American Association of Museum's (AAM) annual Brooking Paper Competition on Creativity in Museums, which honors innovative ideas in the museum field.

Confirming the project's inventiveness, Rau's entry was awarded an Honorable Mention, one of the top three prizes for 2010. Other honorees were the Grand Rapids Public Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. All three winning papers, which share creative and now proven, museum ideas, are available to read on the AAM website.

The Florence Griswold Museum will take lessons learned from the faeries last year and put them to use in this fall's "Scarecrows at the Museum: A Harvestime Adventure." In reading about the winning projects, perhaps you'll find an idea or two you can apply in your own institution.

Click here to read Rau's report on the Wee Faerie Village Project.

Click here to learn more about the 2010 winners of AAM's Brooking Paper on Creativity in Museums.