Leaving a Legacy to Your Profession

Well, my brother the attorney finally convinced me – I’m not getting any younger (the big 50th birthday hit me last fall), and it was time to think of where I wanted my millions (well, maybe a few thousand) to go after I’m done with it here on earth.  Yes, it was time to draw up my WILL!  It gave me sort of a spooky feeling to be thinking of planning for my death, but I must admit that I did want to make up my own mind about where my hard-earned money would end up.

My husband and I gave this a lot of thought over many months.  We were not able to have children, so the option of leaving any funds to our kids was off the table.  Along with my twin brother, I’m the youngest in my family, as is my husband in his.  We figured our siblings could cope on their own, so maybe we’d look toward the next generation.  We’ve lots of nieces and nephews, we thought, so let’s help them out!  Of course, none of them have chosen the lucrative museum field, so they’re actually making or likely to make much more in their chosen professions than we ever will.  Okay, so they don’t really need the bequest.

So…what to do with the bit that we are squirreling away?  Charities and educational foundations, of course!  We’ve come up with a few crusades that are very near and dear to us – a scholarship for high school students (my husband taught for 30 years), funds for homeless kitties (cats make great children!).  And lastly, a cause that is nearest and dearest to my heart: Museums!

Once I thought of that, all was clear.  What have I spent my first 27 years of professional life doing?  Working for museums!  What is the one organization I have had a membership in for all of those years?  VAM!  The Virginia Association of Museums has been valuable to me since I first joined as a graduate student in the early 1980s, and it’s remained a crucial part of my professional life ever since.  Now that I have been on the VAM Council for several years, I have come to see how the organization works behind-the-scenes for its members.  And, clearly, I have come to realize that VAM cannot survive without support both now and in the future from all of us.  I can work in the museum field for another 27 years, and will remain on the VAM Council until the organization tires of me, but the best thing I can do for VAM is to name it as a beneficiary in my will, and that’s what I’ve done.  It won’t be a huge amount of money that will come to VAM in the end, but every little bit helps. 

Come on, VAM colleagues, think ahead and plan for not only your future, but VAM’s as well!  Draw up your will, and include the Virginia Association of Museums as a beneficiary.

- Tracy

Tracy J. Gillespie
Historic Site Supervisor
Aldie Mill Historical Park
Mt. Zion Historical Park/Gilbert's Corner Regional Park
Properties of Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority

Purposeful Museum Blogs

To complement the third VAM member White Paper being released today, entitled Blogging: An Introduction for Museums, this blog post highlights a few museum blogs that we have come across that we think are innovative, purposeful, and provide a conversational 'voice' for their museums.

Wilton House Museum’s Found in the Collection
Museum and Gardens’ Hermitage Collection Connection

These are two innovative blogs that use the museum collections to give life to the blog posts.
The blog posts reciprocate by giving life to objects, telling their stories, and discussing the
overall story the museum has to tell in the process.

Library of Virginia:
Multiple Exposure: Catablog of the Prints and Photographs Collection at the Library ofVirginia
Out of the Box: Notes from the Archives at the Library of Virginia
The LVA has two blogs. They’ve used the first, their “Catablog,” to post prints and photographs
from their collection. The second is similar to the Wilton House and Hermitage blogs in that it
focuses on collections from the LVA archives. I think these collections-focused blogs are great
because they not only enrich the experience of learning about the collection for visitors, but they
extend the museum’s reach and ‘flavor’ well beyond their walls by hosting ‘conversations’ about
their collections for a worldwide audience.
Gari Melcher’s Home and Studio at Belmont: Special Events blog

This is a smart marketing move, aimed at people who may want to rent facilities at Belmont for
a special event such as a wedding. Chocked full of great pictures and stories, I’m sure it’s
enticing for those looking for such a venue!

Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum’s Pushing the Envelope

This is an interesting blog in that it highlights the history behind various stamp designs, and it
shares the content of letters written at different times in history. It’s a smart move for this
museum to have a blog, since they have a lot to offer the very-niche-but-also-very-passionate
audience of stamp collectors around the world.
As stated by Nina Simon of the popular Museum 2.0 blog,
“I believe that the museum blogosphere is still underdeveloped and there's lots of room for people to share their inspiration, experience, and ideas.”

Check out the rest of her post, where she outlines six MORE museum-related blogs that show promise
(December 2010: http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2010/12/six-museum-related-blogs-you-mightnot.
html).

If your museum has a blog, please share that with us - we're always looking to connect to museum blogs!

What's in a Name?

As you may have heard, the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park has a new name - the Virginia Museum of the Civil War. Read Director* Scott Harris' commentary on the name change:

Since 1967, the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park has told the story of the battle that occurred here on May 15, 1864, with special emphasis on the role of the Virginia Military Institute Cadets.  We also describe how that battle and the war generally impacted the Bushong family (whose farm was at the center of the fighting) and other residents of the Shenandoah Valley.  The other major part of our interpretation is the overview of military activity in the state during the entire war, using exhibits originally created for the Civil War Centennial Center in Richmond from 1961 to 1965. 

Adoption of the name “Virginia Museum of the Civil War” places our overall interpretation of the war at the forefront, while retaining the Battle of New Market and Bushong/Shenandoah Valley aspects of our mission.  With the Sesquicentennial upon us, many travelers will (hopefully!) be coming to the Commonwealth for Civil War heritage tourism experiences.  It is our hope that the “brand” embodied in the Virginia Museum of the Civil War will resonate with these travelers.  The broader vision of the museum will also facilitate additional exhibits and programming in the future, which will be developed as resources allow.

What VMI has done with the New Market name isn’t a new concept.  In Virginia alone, I can think of a few relevant examples of institutions that have (or are) undergoing transitions in their names, usually to broaden their appeal and build awareness.  The Roanoke Transportation Museum became the Virginia Museum of Transportation.  The National Museum of the Marine Corps consolidated two former museums, the Marine Corps Historical Center in Washington and the Marine Corps Air-Ground Museum in Quantico.  Jamestown Festival Park became Jamestown Settlement, and the other two Jamestown locations operated by the National Park Service and Preservation Virginia have also seen revisions.  I seem to recall that the Yorktown Victory center was once going to be the Museum of the American Revolution, though variations of that name are being used in several locations. 

Among Civil War sites, the Confederate Memorial Literary Society’s “Confederate Museum” adopted its current name, the Museum of the Confederacy, in 1970.  Pamplin Park Civil War Site (opened in 1994) evolved into Pamplin Historical Park and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier.  In 2000, the Tredegar National Civil War Center opened in Richmond, but was later designated the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar.

The list goes on.  For kicks, I Googled “museum name changes” and got over 49,000,000 hits—though I think there may be a few repeats!

Getting back to New Market, there will be considerable overlap in use of both “Virginia Museum of the Civil War” and “New Market Battlefield State Historical Park” for some time.  The latter name currently appears in many publications, signs, and online resources.  Over time, the new name will assume greater prominence.  However this evolution proceeds, the primary goals will be the same—to help visitors understand the rich legacies of Virginia in the Civil War, including the Battle of New Market and the Shenandoah Valley.

Scott
*Scott Harris is leaving the Virginia Museum of the Civil War in July to assume directorship of the James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library. Best of luck to Scott and both museums as they make leadership transitions!

Cultsha Xpo a Great Success for Richmond's Cultural Nonprofit Community

I'm just speaking by way of what I saw last Saturday. VAM attended the first annual Cultsha Xpo, which was put on by CultureWorks for Richmond at the Science Museum of Virginia. Not knowing what to expect from this inaugural event, I pulled up to find that parking would be a challenge. Turns out I got lucky and found a space right out front, but the place was absolutely packed! Thousands of Richmond's "Cultural shareholders" were on hand to register, pick up their Cultsha Bucks, and "spend" the day away!

We were representing our TimeTravelers program, and gave away a ton of information, and sold several hundreds of dollars worth of TimeTravelers' passport guides. As the crowds slowly diminished and we began to pack up at the end of a long, tiring, but exciting day, I saw a lot of smiling faces, a lot of Cultsha Bucks being counted out, and a "coming together" and bouyancy in the cultural community. Thank you CultureWorks! We'll be there next year.

Flashmob at Cultsha Xpo:

Field Trip Perspectives: Henricus Historical Park (Part 3 of 3)

Museum: Henricus Historical Park
Audience: 2^nd grade
Format: 2 hour guided exploration of life at Henricus

Luckily, I had a day to recover between my 5^th grader’s field trip and my 2^nd grader’s. The second grade traveled to Henricus Historical Park. Unlike the 5^th grade trip, it was a relatively short distance from school, and therefore was not an extended day trip. I wasn’t sure what to expect, since I had never visited Henricus, and had never been on a field trip of children younger than 4^th grade.

Upon reporting to school, we received our groups and instructions from the teachers – we were to stay in a large group that would then be taken through the program by the museum educators. As chaperones, we were to help shepherd the kids from place to place, assist when someone needed a bathroom break or a behavior reminder, and generally help make sure the kids were engaged (they were extremely engaged the entire time!).

This was a very different format from the trip I had just taken, and my role as chaperone was different as a result. While the kids at the Aquarium had taken their own initiative to see this exhibit or that, the museum educators at Henricus were guiding us through various aspects of life for the Powhatans and the English 400 years ago in Colonial Virginia. The program had the kids planting seeds the way the Powhatan Indians would have, hoeing tobacco, and grinding corn. The kids were experiencing a ‘living lesson’ so to speak, while at the Aquarium the kids were largely ‘curating’ their own experience. What I realized was that both formats are extremely valuable for different reasons, and both formats have benefits for different age levels. One benefit of a program such as the one we experienced at Henricus, is that it can be correlated specifically to the standards and curriculum the children are learning in school.

An Aside (Diverging a bit from a chaperone perspective):
Again, there were several children on our trip with special needs. We had school personnel who work with these children on a daily basis on the trip, and we chaperones helped steer these kids back on track when necessary, such as when one child got very caught up in some nearby construction equipment that was working when we as a group were ‘focused’ on the workings of an English farm in Henricus. This made me wonder about best practices – this was a child who, in all likelihood, did not realize that earth moving machinery did not exist in 1611 (I’m sure he was not the only one!). Would this have been an opportunity for the museum educator to discuss “then and now” in a more basic way for the students who may have benefitted from such a discussion? Perhaps it might have, but perhaps not. This was a format where there were four groups circulating through various ‘stations’ within the museum area, and likely each educator had a strict timeline along with learning outcomes to cover. These types of issues, and a myriad others, are those that come up daily in the lives of museum educators, and discussing practices with colleagues and teachers allows reflection and refinement of strategies for all.

The kids thoroughly enjoyed the four ‘stations’ that they visited at Henricus. Each allowed them a glimpse into life at Henricus from various perspectives: the Powhatan perspective, the farmer’s perspective, the tobacco trader’s perspective, and the soldier’s perspective. Each of the educators had their own distinct style, which was good in that different kids  got ‘hooked’ by different strategies and styles. The kids got to see firsthand the differences between the homes, tools, and rules that governed the people who lived in Virginia in 1611.

Once our tour wrapped up, we ate lunch on the lawn before our busses rolled in. My son slept the whole way back to school. Again, I hope that, once back at school, the kids had a chance to reflect on the wide array of learning that took place that day. Research says sleep helps us process new information. Perhaps my son was “reflecting” all the way home!

Field Trip Perspectives: The Virginia Aquarium (Part 2 of 3)

Museum: Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center
Audience: 5^th grade
Format: 3-4 hour self-guided tour
I traveled with my son’s 5^th grade to the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center in Virginia Beach. It was a major trip, and the school hired coaches. This fact, in-and-of itself, garners a lot of excitement among the kids. After all, it’s not every day you can “do your business” on a moving bus. Plus, since it’s May in 5^th grade, this is also the last elementary school field trip for these guys (one of the reasons I wanted to go – childhood is quickly evaporating for my 11 year old!). As chaperones, we were given our list of students, along with the teacher’s cell phone number in case of an emergency. This was to be a self-guided tour throughout this museum with multiple buildings and a huge outdoor component. As a chaperone to five boys, I knew my job would consist largely of “herding cats” all day, and doing my best to keep up. The teachers had downloaded an instructional worksheet from the museum’s website for the kids to use while touring the museum. As a chaperone, it was good to know that I could use this tool to help focus a child who might begin to wander or lose interest (for me, this was not an issue  – my group was incredibly interested, darting from one exhibit to another and truly reading/trying/learning from each).

Demographics
The school is extremely small as far as local zoning. There is only one classroom full of fifth graders from near the school. So the county uses this school as a “zone” school for special programs. So in addition to the local kids, who are racially & ethnically diverse but, largely, come from economically modest households, there is a large number of kids from 20+ other elementary schools who attend this school because they are in a “gifted” zone program. This group, too, is racially, ethnically, and economically diverse. In addition to that, the school has a zone program for deaf students.

An Aside
This makes me think about school field trip booking procedures (OK, I’m diverging for a moment from my perspective as a chaperone) – because, had this been a guided educational program led by museum educators or docents, they would surely have noticed that this was an extremely diverse group that required various special teaching considerations. I wonder how much of this type of information is gathered by most museums prior to a trip? Surely it would be helpful to know who you are dealing with, and how to best accommodate their needs. The kids’ needs and the diversity in the types of learners was not a problem b/c of the self-guided nature of the tour. That is one benefit to such a structure for a field trip – different learners will walk away with different experiences, based upon their interests, abilities, etc. At a place like the Virginia Aquarium, there were plenty of things to interest different kids.

Our group hustled through the Marsh Pavilion to the aviary, where they picked up the identification sheets so they could figure out what types of birds they were seeing. In the Pavilion, they loved seeing the snapping turtle, fiddler crabs, and seahorses. We had an hour in this section of the museum prior to eating lunch out back in the shade. The kids’ enthusiasm was only slightly tempered by hunger by the time we sat down to eat. One in my group was celebrating a birthday, so soon Krispy Kreme donuts were passed around and songs were sung. The day was not only filled with learning, it was festive and celebratory. The kids were (no wonder!) in a great mood and so happy to be together outside of school.

After lunch, we headed through the outside areas on our way to the main building. We could have spent a lot more time at each of the outdoor stations, but as chaperone I knew that there was a lot to see in the Center, and I also knew what time the busses would be picking us up, so we chose one or two stops along the way and pushed on so that we’d have plenty of time to explore once we were inside.

In the exhibit areas, one thing stood out to me (I had not been on a 5^th grade field trip since I taught 5^th grade back in the mid-90’s): the technology. The kids were not only interacting with the exhibits in the way that you’d imagine (touching, reading, trying the experiments, pointing out the fish), but many of the kids had some sort of technology – whether that be a phone with photo and internet capabilities, an ipod touch, or a digital camera. Some of the kids were looking up different marine creatures on the internet to learn more about them while in the exhibit halls. I overheard one girl, when we passed through one of the halls, comment, “Shoot! I just lost my signal!”

An Aside: II
The technology that gets brought into museums by school groups is, of course, rather a new phenomenon, but it is one that museum professionals can consider when exhibit planning. Should all of your galleries be WiFi areas? Should there be QR codes at different stations for those who have the capability to use their mobile device as a learning tool? What about the use of iPads in galleries? There has been a lot of buzz in the world of museum education about how these devices can be utilized in a 21^st century museum. Of course, not all age groups and demographics will have mobile devices (certainly in our diverse group, there were many kids who did not bring such a tool), so there is a balance to be struck between taking advantage of technological opportunities and serving all audiences.

Exhausted, with our minds buzzing with all we had seen over the past few hours, we entered the area where the kids could “pet” the stingrays. For my son, this was the highlight. It also provided a stop where the kids all slowed down a little, stayed longer than at a lot of the exhibits, and quieted down as they observed and interacted with the stingrays. It was a good ending. As we left the museum, I was wondering how (and if) the teachers were planning to “unpack the experience” for the kids once back at school. Processing ALL THE INFORMATION is key so that the group can get the most from their experience as possible. This is especially important on a self-guided tour.

An Aside: III
If your museum offers a self-guided tour, you may consider offering post-visit activities (online or otherwise) that assist in the “unpacking” of the experience. What I mean by that is that the experience itself is rather short, very filled with energy and excitement, and continually active. Educational research consistently shows that, to complement that type of experience, students need the opportunity to reflect, analyze, make connections, and extend their experience. While many of the post-visit activities I’ve seen focus on kids recalling what they’ve seen or classifying items, a simple, open-ended journal prompt that allows the kids to reflect back on an aspect of their visit, or an assignment that asks the kids to create a short instructional video about the experience for a younger student to view, allows the kids a little more leeway as far as reflection and consideration of the museum’s collection or program. (And if museum educators could have a chance to see products such as this, they’d provide invaluable insight for planning and evaluation of programs).

Field Trip Perspectives (Part 1 of 3)

Every museum educator knows that May is “Field Trip Month” in Virginia and D.C. Recently, I removed my VAM hat and put on my “mom visor” to chaperone two field trips – one with my fifth grader; one with my second grader. In addition to the trips being with different age groups, one was a long (read: excited kids on tour bus!) trip, while the other was more local, and one was a self-guided tour while the other was completely guided by museum educators. I decided to blog from the perspective of a field trip chaperone to add yet another point of view to our “Perspectives from the Field” VAM blog. So, in the next two posts, read about two very different – but very educational and beneficial - field trips from a slightly different “bent.”
While I’m discussing school programs, I’ll use this space to remind folks that if your museum offers summer (or anytime!) teacher institutes, lectures, workshops, or open houses, VAM is happy to list those on the Teachers section of our website. Simply email the information or a link to the page on your site where it is described to Heather.