Earlier this month Stephanie Redman and I were in Cheyenne Wyoming to work with the five local Main Street mangers of the Wyoming Main Street program. The state program had contracted with us to present our two day training session "Strategic Leadership for Main Street Organizations." And it was a great hit.
This workshop is designed to enable seasoned downtown mangers to develop a clear strategy to take their organization and their own skills to the next level. The workshop is in two parts. It is centered around two, hour long, one-on one-coaching sessions with us, after the manager completes self assessments: one about the Main Street organization, the other about the individual manager's leadership skills.
Both of these assessments, created by outside organizations, had real relevance for both Stephanie and me, and we decided to combine these as components of our workshop. We also include planning exercises and group discussions to help participants identify specific issues to be addressed, and then strategies to vault the organization forward. Some of the worksheets we use address overcoming obstacles, pathways to use leadership strengths for guiding change, and creating a plan for selling organizational growth at home through a well honed "elevator pitch."
Here is what they said about Strategic Leadership for Main Street
"You ladies were an absolute treat. I am so grateful for your time and interest in our programs. I know our communities will benefit and we have found new friends. Thank you.
"The exercises were good and made me think."
"This has been fun, encouraging and validates my thoughts and efforts to this point."
"I learned that what we--and me--are doing needs to readjusted--better defined, cleaner, less clutter!"
"Donna was a great help. Stephanie's comments and suggestions are and will be very helpful. Thank you."
"Your wealth of knowledge, presentation skills and genuineness are truly amazing and appreciated."
Gee, we didn't know!
Contact me if you want to learn more about Strategic Leadership for Main Street Organizations.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Red Bank Historic Preservation Commission Working Hard on Historic Preservation Element
The Red Bank Historic Preservation Commission has been working hard to complete their Historic Preservation Element for the new Red Bank Master Plan this year. Throughout the past two months, they have been researching and reviewing the existing master plan to see how it's provisions impact the preservation of historic sites in the Borough. They have compiled their inventory of historic sites, all 194 properties, that they review as part of their advisory role to the Mayor and City Council of Red Bank.
George Bowden, Edward Poplawski, Michaela Ferrigine, Mark Fitzsimmons, Mary Gilligan, and Ed Zipprich have been instrumental in the research and writing of their historic preservation element.
A preservation element is an optional portion of a Municipal Plan in New Jersey. The purpose of an historic preservation element, according to NJSA 40:55D-28b (10) “a historic preservation plan element: (a) indicates the location and significance of historic sites and historic districts; (b) identifies the standards used to assess worthiness for historic site or district identification; and (c) analyzes the impact of each component and element of the master plan on the preservation of historic sites and districts.”
Assistance for this work with Red Bank has been provided by Preservation New Jersey through a grant from the Department of Community Affairs.
I am now working or have worked with Tenafly, Metuchen, Independence, Mountain Lakes, Rutherford, Fanwood, Bridgeton and Highstown New Jersey on their Historic Preservation Elements. For more information, contact Ron Emrich at Preservation New Jersey at ron@preservationnj.org for more information to see if your town can receive this assistance at no cost.
George Bowden, Edward Poplawski, Michaela Ferrigine, Mark Fitzsimmons, Mary Gilligan, and Ed Zipprich have been instrumental in the research and writing of their historic preservation element.
A preservation element is an optional portion of a Municipal Plan in New Jersey. The purpose of an historic preservation element, according to NJSA 40:55D-28b (10) “a historic preservation plan element: (a) indicates the location and significance of historic sites and historic districts; (b) identifies the standards used to assess worthiness for historic site or district identification; and (c) analyzes the impact of each component and element of the master plan on the preservation of historic sites and districts.”
Assistance for this work with Red Bank has been provided by Preservation New Jersey through a grant from the Department of Community Affairs.
I am now working or have worked with Tenafly, Metuchen, Independence, Mountain Lakes, Rutherford, Fanwood, Bridgeton and Highstown New Jersey on their Historic Preservation Elements. For more information, contact Ron Emrich at Preservation New Jersey at ron@preservationnj.org for more information to see if your town can receive this assistance at no cost.
Donna to speak at New Jersey Forum 11-22-08 on house museums
This Saturday I will be speaking at the New Jersey Forum, a conference that brings together local historians and academics to discuss new research on New Jersey studies.
25th Annual New Jersey History Conference - New Jersey Forum
November 22, 2008
Marriott Hotel, Trenton NJ
Sponsored by:
The New Jersey Historical Commission
The New Jersey State Archives
The New Jersey State Museum
PANEL 2: Interpreting a Preserved Landscape: New Jersey Museums and Architecture (Ewing Room)
Moderator: Ron Emrich, Preservation New Jersey, Trenton
New Solutions for House Museums
Donna Ann Harris, Heritage Consulting, Inc.
Take Any Exit: The Colonial Revival in New Jersey
Harriette Hawkins, independent scholar
Telling the Straight Story: Truth & Fiction in Building Interpretation
Margaret Westfield, Westfield Architects
My talk will include case studies of two New Jersey house museum organizations: the Meadows Foundation in Somerset NJ and the Alice Paul Institute, which owns and operates Paulsdale, the birthplace of Alice Paul, author of the Equal Rights Amendment.
My involvement with Paulsdale goes back more than 20 years when I met Barbara Irvine, one of the "founding mothers" of the Alice Paul Centennial Foundation. Barbara and I met through her husband Geoff who was taking a real estate class with me. After learning what I did for a living, he said "do you think you could talk to my wife about a project she is working on?" I did, and have worked off and on with Barbara over the years, as the organization struggled and fought to buy and restore this important building.
Now, more than 20 years later, I have the joy of talking about an exceptionally successful organization that preserved an important house and provides innovative programming for women and girls at Alice Paul's beloved home, Paulsdale.
The cost of the conference is $40. This fee covers continental breakfast and lunch. Please send check or purchase order to the address below by November 17, 2008 payable to: Treasurer – State of New Jersey.
Annual Conference – New Jersey Forum
NJ Historical Commission
PO Box 305
Trenton, NJ 08625-0305
The convention site is accessible to the handicapped. If you have questions regarding special access needs, professional development credit for teachers, or exhibit tables, or anything else connected with the conference, contact Ms. Sarah-Helen Snow at the Historical Commission (609-984-3458), or via email at historical.temp2@sos.state.nj.us \
Hope to see you there!
25th Annual New Jersey History Conference - New Jersey Forum
November 22, 2008
Marriott Hotel, Trenton NJ
Sponsored by:
The New Jersey Historical Commission
The New Jersey State Archives
The New Jersey State Museum
PANEL 2: Interpreting a Preserved Landscape: New Jersey Museums and Architecture (Ewing Room)
Moderator: Ron Emrich, Preservation New Jersey, Trenton
New Solutions for House Museums
Donna Ann Harris, Heritage Consulting, Inc.
Take Any Exit: The Colonial Revival in New Jersey
Harriette Hawkins, independent scholar
Telling the Straight Story: Truth & Fiction in Building Interpretation
Margaret Westfield, Westfield Architects
My talk will include case studies of two New Jersey house museum organizations: the Meadows Foundation in Somerset NJ and the Alice Paul Institute, which owns and operates Paulsdale, the birthplace of Alice Paul, author of the Equal Rights Amendment.
My involvement with Paulsdale goes back more than 20 years when I met Barbara Irvine, one of the "founding mothers" of the Alice Paul Centennial Foundation. Barbara and I met through her husband Geoff who was taking a real estate class with me. After learning what I did for a living, he said "do you think you could talk to my wife about a project she is working on?" I did, and have worked off and on with Barbara over the years, as the organization struggled and fought to buy and restore this important building.
Now, more than 20 years later, I have the joy of talking about an exceptionally successful organization that preserved an important house and provides innovative programming for women and girls at Alice Paul's beloved home, Paulsdale.
The cost of the conference is $40. This fee covers continental breakfast and lunch. Please send check or purchase order to the address below by November 17, 2008 payable to: Treasurer – State of New Jersey.
Annual Conference – New Jersey Forum
NJ Historical Commission
PO Box 305
Trenton, NJ 08625-0305
The convention site is accessible to the handicapped. If you have questions regarding special access needs, professional development credit for teachers, or exhibit tables, or anything else connected with the conference, contact Ms. Sarah-Helen Snow at the Historical Commission (609-984-3458), or via email at historical.temp2@sos.state.nj.us \
Hope to see you there!
The Public Historian--Review of New Solutions for House Museums
Another review of New Solutions for House Museums, this time in the journal The Public Historian, of the National Council for Public History.
New Solutions for House Museums: Ensuring the Long-Term Preservation of America’s Historic Houses by Donna Ann Harris. Lanham, MD: Alta -Mira Press, 2007; paperbound, $27.95.
No one will deny the problem: long struggling with inadequate or non existent endowments, deferred maintenance, and declining visitation, historic house museums are in trouble. What were the legacies of many women-based membership preservation organizations have become the burdens of the government and well-intentioned but financially strapped friends groups. This dilemma, widespread as it is, has been on the minds of preservationists, cultural historians, architects, and generally those people who love old buildings.
The number of historic house museums multiplied during the history boom of the American Bicentennial, which was also a hey day of government sponsorship and support. A decade or two later, these same vital organizations found themselves in dire straits—the very buildings and sites that members came together to preserve had deteriorated and the aging membership clung to models of management that were keeping up with neither the costs of operations nor the changing desires of audiences.
Donna Harris’s book, New Solutions for House Museums, is a kind of call to arms, but not in any traditional sense. She does not say that we must redouble our energies to make these places rich with visitor entry fees so that we can all maintain the properties as historic house museums. Instead, she tells her primary audience—the trustees, staff, and volunteers at these special places—that “museum use is not necessarily the best conclusion for every hard-won preservation battle” (4).
Harris’s book is organized in a very clear fashion: Part I is titled “Assessment and Decision Making.” There she charts the course of historic house development, discusses the legal and ethical issues in changing ownership or use, and outlines the sometimes tortured decision-making process when considering that difficult transition. At every step, the author displays an empathetic objectivity of a sort that one imagines a counselor might in advising parents considering giving up a “baby” for adoption.
Part II begins with an overview of the eight solutions that the author then highlights in chapters 7 to 15. Each of the solutions comes in the form of a well-chosen case study: Historic New England, Margaret Mitchell House and Museum (Atlanta, Georgia), and Casa Amesti (Monterey, California) are three of them. With each of the eight examples, Harris explains the administrative history of the property, the nature of the governing board, the peculiarities of each situation and, most importantly, the reason why the solutions embraced by each case study fits that particular group. Each example comes with a section titled “How to Use This Case Study,” which is especially helpful if the reader is trying to match his or her situation with a particular set of circumstances.
So as not to tip Harris’s hand, I only list a few of the eight solutions that she discusses in detail: sale to another nonprofit stewardship organization (or private owner) with easements, creation of a study house, merger with another house museum organization, or lease to a for-profit entity for an adaptive use.
Harris comes well positioned to write such a book and to summarize some of the issues that have dogged many public historians. Having attended several of Harris’s presentations at museum and public history annual meetings during recent years, I have anticipated her published work that has been generously funded by innovative donors—The Pew Charitable Trusts and the James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation.
A Columbia University School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation graduate and twenty-year veteran as historic preservation executive and project manager, Harris has wrestled creatively with the dilemma that has faced or will soon face many who work in historic house museums. She has written an especially critical handbook for museum trustees, staff members, and volunteer leaders who are currently struggling with long-term plans for the health of their structures and sites.
Besides this audience, however, I recommend that the book be considered required or recommended reading as part of any number of public history classes. Learning well these proposed alternatives-to-museums will stand our students in good stead as they prepare to manage the nation’s historic houses in the coming decades. Those graduates who are familiar with the concepts and with the application of multiple strategies for preservation will be not only more employable, but they will also be more effective stewards of the built environment.
Donna Harris has done a great service for historic house museums and the people who are passionate about them. The solutions and strategies for their“saving” are not always new, as the author acknowledges, but she presents the strategies in a well-organized and very understandable format. Perhaps just as importantly as making the information extremely accessible, the author helps remove a certain guilt about asking for help with regard to maintenance and ongoing management. And she does not flinch from telling organizations that they are in for some difficult times.
Cynthia Brandimarte Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
Here is the citation. The Public Historian, Summer 2008, Vol. 30, No. 3, Pages 101–103 Posted online on September 5, 2008. (doi:10.1525/tph.2008.30.3.101)
New Solutions for House Museums: Ensuring the Long-Term Preservation of America’s Historic Houses by Donna Ann Harris. Lanham, MD: Alta -Mira Press, 2007; paperbound, $27.95.
No one will deny the problem: long struggling with inadequate or non existent endowments, deferred maintenance, and declining visitation, historic house museums are in trouble. What were the legacies of many women-based membership preservation organizations have become the burdens of the government and well-intentioned but financially strapped friends groups. This dilemma, widespread as it is, has been on the minds of preservationists, cultural historians, architects, and generally those people who love old buildings.
The number of historic house museums multiplied during the history boom of the American Bicentennial, which was also a hey day of government sponsorship and support. A decade or two later, these same vital organizations found themselves in dire straits—the very buildings and sites that members came together to preserve had deteriorated and the aging membership clung to models of management that were keeping up with neither the costs of operations nor the changing desires of audiences.
Donna Harris’s book, New Solutions for House Museums, is a kind of call to arms, but not in any traditional sense. She does not say that we must redouble our energies to make these places rich with visitor entry fees so that we can all maintain the properties as historic house museums. Instead, she tells her primary audience—the trustees, staff, and volunteers at these special places—that “museum use is not necessarily the best conclusion for every hard-won preservation battle” (4).
Harris’s book is organized in a very clear fashion: Part I is titled “Assessment and Decision Making.” There she charts the course of historic house development, discusses the legal and ethical issues in changing ownership or use, and outlines the sometimes tortured decision-making process when considering that difficult transition. At every step, the author displays an empathetic objectivity of a sort that one imagines a counselor might in advising parents considering giving up a “baby” for adoption.
Part II begins with an overview of the eight solutions that the author then highlights in chapters 7 to 15. Each of the solutions comes in the form of a well-chosen case study: Historic New England, Margaret Mitchell House and Museum (Atlanta, Georgia), and Casa Amesti (Monterey, California) are three of them. With each of the eight examples, Harris explains the administrative history of the property, the nature of the governing board, the peculiarities of each situation and, most importantly, the reason why the solutions embraced by each case study fits that particular group. Each example comes with a section titled “How to Use This Case Study,” which is especially helpful if the reader is trying to match his or her situation with a particular set of circumstances.
So as not to tip Harris’s hand, I only list a few of the eight solutions that she discusses in detail: sale to another nonprofit stewardship organization (or private owner) with easements, creation of a study house, merger with another house museum organization, or lease to a for-profit entity for an adaptive use.
Harris comes well positioned to write such a book and to summarize some of the issues that have dogged many public historians. Having attended several of Harris’s presentations at museum and public history annual meetings during recent years, I have anticipated her published work that has been generously funded by innovative donors—The Pew Charitable Trusts and the James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation.
A Columbia University School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation graduate and twenty-year veteran as historic preservation executive and project manager, Harris has wrestled creatively with the dilemma that has faced or will soon face many who work in historic house museums. She has written an especially critical handbook for museum trustees, staff members, and volunteer leaders who are currently struggling with long-term plans for the health of their structures and sites.
Besides this audience, however, I recommend that the book be considered required or recommended reading as part of any number of public history classes. Learning well these proposed alternatives-to-museums will stand our students in good stead as they prepare to manage the nation’s historic houses in the coming decades. Those graduates who are familiar with the concepts and with the application of multiple strategies for preservation will be not only more employable, but they will also be more effective stewards of the built environment.
Donna Harris has done a great service for historic house museums and the people who are passionate about them. The solutions and strategies for their“saving” are not always new, as the author acknowledges, but she presents the strategies in a well-organized and very understandable format. Perhaps just as importantly as making the information extremely accessible, the author helps remove a certain guilt about asking for help with regard to maintenance and ongoing management. And she does not flinch from telling organizations that they are in for some difficult times.
Cynthia Brandimarte Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
Here is the citation. The Public Historian, Summer 2008, Vol. 30, No. 3, Pages 101–103 Posted online on September 5, 2008. (doi:10.1525/tph.2008.30.3.101)
Museums Australia review of New Solutions for House Museums
From the journal Museums Australia, here is a review of New Solutions for House Museums.
New Solutions for House Museums: Ensuring the Long-Term Preservation of
America’s Historic Houses, Donna Ann Harris, AltaMira Press, Plymouth,
2007.
New Solutions for House Museums is the most recent in an established series
of practical and pertinent technical handbooks on history and on museums,
published by the American Association for State and Local History,
Tennessee. This timely and accessible work offers scenarios and solutions to
a key issue facing historic house museum managers – when the preservation
of their site to the level that their historic buildings needs and deserves
becomes unsustainable and necessitates a change in the perception and use
of their asset, the historic house museum. The target audience is identified as
the board and staff members of non-profit house museums, those who are
struggling with insufficient financial or human resources to achieve this critical
level of preservation. Although the examples used in the scenarios are of
volunteer and small town-run house museums in the United States, they are
readily adaptable to non-profit house museum organisations of other sizes
and in other countries. The reader is urged, as a responsible manager, to use
material from the case studies to help determine the sustainability of the
house museum for which they are responsible.
An unsustainable site is defined as one where regular, predictable income
exceeds 50 per cent of the yearly operations. If this sounds familiar, then the
onus is on you to make your house museum to ‘begin working today to chart a
new future for your precious resource.’ A health check list is provided,
probably similar to one used in periodical property operation reviews, to
ensure that our house museums are in good health.
The book is divided into two parts.
Part One is Assessment and Decision Making. This focuses on the
responsibility of the house museum’s board, including legal and ethical issues
and the importance of maintenance, recognising the historic building as the
house museum’s main asset, and as a community asset held in trust for the
public.
Harris discusses the difficulties of organisational change and offers a step by
step process of sensible, practical and empowering actions for undertaking
this change. For example, one of the solutions to the disposal of sale
proceeds from selling the house museum is a revolving loan fund to buy
threatened historic sites, place easements on them, and sell to private
owners. She argues that the transition from public to private ownership
promises to benefit the houses, as their maintenance is guaranteed; and to
benefit the local preservation community with new funds to continue the
organisation’s preservation mission for the future.
Part Two is Solutions and Case Studies. This focuses on providing a range of
possible ownership and reuse solutions of house museums that have made a
successful transition to a new owner or use, to provide inspiration and
reassure the managers that their problems are not unique; and to show that
there are good solutions pioneered by other non profit making organisations
of different sizes. These include short and long term leases, asset transfers
and mergers, sale to a private owner with easements and sale to a non profit
stewardship organisation.
The actions that Harris recommends are considered, and based on two years
research of fifty house museums in the USA in unsustainable situations. She
takes a pragmatic approach to ‘preserving’ historic houses, advocating that
the long term preservation of the house is the key objective and that
conserving and interpreting it as a historic house museum open to the public
is only one way of achieving this. She acknowledges and then gently cuts the
ties that bind the individual manager or the board to their emotional
engagement with the museum, to enable them to refocus on the long term
preservation of the building in the community. This is a difficult and sensitive
operation, and one that is handled with insight and determination.
Whilst not necessarily ‘new solutions for [old] house museums’, this
publication brings together a number of workable solutions for a contemporary
issue of concern. The sustainability of house museums, and museums in
general, is under discussion in Australia. Museum sustainability in a changing
climate was the topic of the May 2007 Museums Australia National
Conference, with a session devoted to house museums.
I would like to have seen more emphasis placed on the importance of
preserving the interpretative components of the historic house museum, such
as detailed documentation of the interiors, the collection, the garden and
grounds, and the narratives of the occupants; and on confirming a rigorous
deaccessioning process for the ‘heritage’ to be maintained in the ‘asset’ and
for the future. Otherwise, timely, concise, practical, well researched, targeted
to an audience who might find professional assistance useful, and written in
everyday language, this is a handy management tool.
Note: This project was the result of a Mid Career Fellowship by a private New
York-based Foundation granted annually to leaders in historic preservation
and related fields to undertake research and publications vital to the field.
Australia would do well to follow this productive lead.
Suzanne Bravery is a Curator with the Historic Houses Trust of New South
Wales.
Here is the link. http://www.museumsaustralia.org.au/site/pg715.php
New Solutions for House Museums: Ensuring the Long-Term Preservation of
America’s Historic Houses, Donna Ann Harris, AltaMira Press, Plymouth,
2007.
New Solutions for House Museums is the most recent in an established series
of practical and pertinent technical handbooks on history and on museums,
published by the American Association for State and Local History,
Tennessee. This timely and accessible work offers scenarios and solutions to
a key issue facing historic house museum managers – when the preservation
of their site to the level that their historic buildings needs and deserves
becomes unsustainable and necessitates a change in the perception and use
of their asset, the historic house museum. The target audience is identified as
the board and staff members of non-profit house museums, those who are
struggling with insufficient financial or human resources to achieve this critical
level of preservation. Although the examples used in the scenarios are of
volunteer and small town-run house museums in the United States, they are
readily adaptable to non-profit house museum organisations of other sizes
and in other countries. The reader is urged, as a responsible manager, to use
material from the case studies to help determine the sustainability of the
house museum for which they are responsible.
An unsustainable site is defined as one where regular, predictable income
exceeds 50 per cent of the yearly operations. If this sounds familiar, then the
onus is on you to make your house museum to ‘begin working today to chart a
new future for your precious resource.’ A health check list is provided,
probably similar to one used in periodical property operation reviews, to
ensure that our house museums are in good health.
The book is divided into two parts.
Part One is Assessment and Decision Making. This focuses on the
responsibility of the house museum’s board, including legal and ethical issues
and the importance of maintenance, recognising the historic building as the
house museum’s main asset, and as a community asset held in trust for the
public.
Harris discusses the difficulties of organisational change and offers a step by
step process of sensible, practical and empowering actions for undertaking
this change. For example, one of the solutions to the disposal of sale
proceeds from selling the house museum is a revolving loan fund to buy
threatened historic sites, place easements on them, and sell to private
owners. She argues that the transition from public to private ownership
promises to benefit the houses, as their maintenance is guaranteed; and to
benefit the local preservation community with new funds to continue the
organisation’s preservation mission for the future.
Part Two is Solutions and Case Studies. This focuses on providing a range of
possible ownership and reuse solutions of house museums that have made a
successful transition to a new owner or use, to provide inspiration and
reassure the managers that their problems are not unique; and to show that
there are good solutions pioneered by other non profit making organisations
of different sizes. These include short and long term leases, asset transfers
and mergers, sale to a private owner with easements and sale to a non profit
stewardship organisation.
The actions that Harris recommends are considered, and based on two years
research of fifty house museums in the USA in unsustainable situations. She
takes a pragmatic approach to ‘preserving’ historic houses, advocating that
the long term preservation of the house is the key objective and that
conserving and interpreting it as a historic house museum open to the public
is only one way of achieving this. She acknowledges and then gently cuts the
ties that bind the individual manager or the board to their emotional
engagement with the museum, to enable them to refocus on the long term
preservation of the building in the community. This is a difficult and sensitive
operation, and one that is handled with insight and determination.
Whilst not necessarily ‘new solutions for [old] house museums’, this
publication brings together a number of workable solutions for a contemporary
issue of concern. The sustainability of house museums, and museums in
general, is under discussion in Australia. Museum sustainability in a changing
climate was the topic of the May 2007 Museums Australia National
Conference, with a session devoted to house museums.
I would like to have seen more emphasis placed on the importance of
preserving the interpretative components of the historic house museum, such
as detailed documentation of the interiors, the collection, the garden and
grounds, and the narratives of the occupants; and on confirming a rigorous
deaccessioning process for the ‘heritage’ to be maintained in the ‘asset’ and
for the future. Otherwise, timely, concise, practical, well researched, targeted
to an audience who might find professional assistance useful, and written in
everyday language, this is a handy management tool.
Note: This project was the result of a Mid Career Fellowship by a private New
York-based Foundation granted annually to leaders in historic preservation
and related fields to undertake research and publications vital to the field.
Australia would do well to follow this productive lead.
Suzanne Bravery is a Curator with the Historic Houses Trust of New South
Wales.
Here is the link. http://www.museumsaustralia.org.au/site/pg715.php
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