Workshop: Connecting Your Collections to Teachers and Students
Through a combination of presentations, discussion, hands-on activities, and take-home materials, this workshop addresses the elements of museum educational and programming needed to create engaging, educational, and successful collections-based programming.
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Date: June 22-23, 2017
Cost: $280 AASLH members/$405 nonmembers
*Get $40 off registration if you book by May 18, 2017!*
Location: George Mason's Gunston Hall, Mason Neck, VA
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Description:
Through a combination of presentations, discussion, hands-on activities, and take-home materials, this workshop addresses the elements of museum educational and programming needed to create engaging, educational, and successful collections-based programming. Learn how to craft programming that is meaningful to the education community.
Topics include learning styles, presentation strategies, audience types, planning strategies, program assessment, research, and staff training.
Who Should Attend:
This workshop is ideally suited for staff (first-time museum educators, directors, tour guides or volunteer managers and mid-career professionals), museum studies students, or dedicated volunteers working in all types of museums who are given the responsibility of education and public programming.
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About the Faculty:
Stacia Kuceyeski is the Director of Outreach at the Ohio History Connection. Stacia provides high quality professional development for cultural heritage professionals as well as a K-16 audience in a variety of humanities content areas and learning theories. She has presented and published for a number of organizations including the American Association of State and Local History, the Midwest Archives Conference and the Teaching American History Project Directors’ Conference. Stacia also has extensive grant writing experience and has received funding from a variety of national, state and local foundations and granting agencies. Luckily, her grant writing abilities far surpass her singing, drawing and poetry writing skills. When not making professional development magic happen, Stacia enjoys the Golden Girls, sassy earrings and an unnatural affection for our 27th president, William Howard Taft. Stacia earned her B.A. in History and her M.A. in Cultural Policy and Arts Administration, both from The Ohio State University.
Megan Wood is the Director of Museum and Library Services at the Ohio History Connection. Megan has over a decade of experience in museums and public history. She has a MA in History Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program and a BA in Public History from Western Michigan University.
This workshop is presented in partnership with the Creative Learning Factory at the Ohio History Connection.
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Workshop: Collections Camp: Textiles
Do you have costumes and/or textiles in your museum collection? This two day workshop will focus on the care and conservation of textiles in museum collections. Spend time working with an expert to learn how to be a better steward of your textile collection.
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Date: April 24-25, 2017
Cost: $300 AASLH members/$425 nonmembers
*Get $40 off registration if you book by March 22, 2017!*
Location: Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, IN
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Who should attend:
This workshop, scheduled for April 24-25, is intended for experienced staff and volunteers with responsibility for costume and textile collections.
As a result of this workshop, participants should:
*Have a general knowledge of the basic types of costumes and textiles common in American museum collections.
* Have a general knowledge of the particular needs of costume and textile collections including proper identification, handling, and basic conservation.
* Be familiar with some of the current issues and trends in the preservation of costume and textile collections.
* Explore the variety of issues related to exhibiting and storing costume and textile collections.
* Be familiar with simple conservation procedures that are safe to perform on their costume and textile collections.
* Be aware of when they should call a professional conservator for problems with their costume and textile collections.
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About the Faculty:
Karen DePauw is the Coordinator with Local History Services at the Indiana Historical Society.
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Workshop: Historic House Museum Issues and Operations
Why are historic houses necessary to their communities? How are historic house museums unique?
This workshop focuses on the unique needs, management, and interpretation of historic houses. With a focus on historic house museums, topics covered include collections care, types of research appropriate for historic house museums, exhibition development, interpretive tours, volunteers, and building and landscape maintenance.
See a sample agenda
Details:
Date: April 6-7, 2017
Location: Strawbery Banke | Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Cost: $270 members/$385 nonmembers
FLASH SALE: $50 off all registrations from March 9-13!
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What Participants Said:
“The ‘notebook’ of articles is a great idea and a tangible helper to take back with us. The faculty’s experiences were invaluable–they will be a great resource, too!”
“The most helpful part was seeing institutions’ actual documents.”
“The enthusiasm & varied backgrounds of the participants was helpful.”
“As a volunteer–gave me a realistic view of the job description of our curators, staff & us as volunteers.”
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About the Faculty:
Max A. van Balgooy is the president of Engaging Places, LLC, a design and strategy firm that helps connect people with historic places. He is a national leader in historical interpretation and community engagement, with extensive experience in developing solutions in collaboration with diverse audiences, including volunteers, staff, trustees, residents, scholars, design professionals, business leaders, and elected officials. He has more than 35 years of experience working in museums historic preservation, heritage tourism, and historic sites, including senior positions at the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Workman and Temple Homestead Museum. A recognized researcher, author, speaker, and blogger on the trends, challenges, and opportunities facing museums, historic sites, and cultural organizations, he is a frequently requested facilitator, trainer, and consultant on business strategy, historical interpretation, public programming, marketing, and online media.
He also teaches in the Museum Studies Program at George Washington University, sits on the editorial board of Curator journal, is a MAP Peer Reviewer with the American Alliance of Museums, and served on the AASLH Council. He received his M.A. in history from the University of Delaware as a Hagley Fellow, his B.A. in history from Pomona College, and participated in the Historic Deerfield Summer Program in Early American History and Material Culture and the Attingham Summer School for the Study of Historic Houses and Collections.
George W. McDaniel is President of McDaniel Consulting, LLC, a company George established after serving 25 years as Executive Director of Drayton Hall, a historic site in Charleston, SC owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. McDaniel Consulting’s tag line, “Building Bridges through History,” is grounded in George’s personal beliefs and his experience in site management, preservation, education, board development, fundraising, and community outreach. Rather than using history to divide us, he strives to help organizations use history, especially local history, to enhance cross-cultural understanding and to support local museums, preservation, and education. As an example, George recently led volunteer efforts with Emanuel AME Church and historical organizations in Charleston to use historic preservation to enhance racial reconciliation and healing.
A native of Atlanta, he holds a B.A. in history from Sewanee, an M.A.T. in history from Brown University, and a Ph.D. in history from Duke University. The author of numerous publications, he has written two essays for 2017 AASLH publications: “Commemorating Tragedy, Healing Wounds: Mother Emanuel AME Church” in Commemoration: An American Association of State and Local History Guide, and “Building Bridges through Local History” in Encyclopedia of Local History. Also due for publication in 2017by the University of Virginia Press is his essay, "Stepping Up and Saving Places: Case Studies in Whole Place Preservation,” in Stewards of Memory: The Past, Present, and Future of Historic Preservation at Mount Vernon. A frequent presenter at workshops, conferences, and public gatherings, he earned in 2015 the South Carolina Environmental Awareness Award and in 2016 the S.C. Governor’s Award for Historic Preservation, the first person in the state to have won the leadership awards in both fields.
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Workshop: Focusing on Visitors: Public Programming and Exhibits at History Institutions
This workshop provides a broad overview of public programming and exhibits with a focus on active learning. Seasoned educators will direct conversations about museum education and the role of museum educators.
Participants will leave the workshop with information and materials they can take back to their organizations to adapt and apply.Through interactive activities and case studies, participants will gain knowledge and tools for a wide range of relevant topics, including audience types, volunteer management and training, tour techniques, active learning with people of all ages, developing exhibits with visitors in mind, technology, evaluations, planning, and working with others to build programs.
The themes of this workshop are based on the publication The Museum Educator’s Manual: Educators Share Successful Techniques, coauthored by one of the workshop instructors.
Details:
Date: March 30-31, 2017
Location: Atlanta History Center | Atlanta, Georgia
Cost: $280 AASLH Members/$405 Nonmembers
*Get $40 off registration if you book by February 23, 2017!*
Who Should Attend:
This workshop is ideally suited for staff (first-time museum educators, tour guides, volunteer managers, and mid-career professionals), museum studies students, or dedicated volunteers working in all types of museums who are given the responsibility of education and public programming.
Click here for a sample agenda for this workshop.
Faculty:
Tim Grove is the Chief of Education for the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, and co-author of The Museum Educator’s Manual: Educators Share Successful Techniques. The 2nd Edition of the book is coming out this spring.
Alexandra Rasic is the Director of Public Programs for the Homestead Museum in City of Industry, CA.
Workshop: Reinventing the Historic House Museum
This workshop is full. Please check our calendar for future offerings of this workshop.
Reinventing the Historic House Museum is a one-day symposium is designed to offer current thinking, practical information, and solutions to the challenges facing historic sites. The Historic House Museum in America is not dead nor is it dying. The field, however, needs to take time to reflect and renew as the world around our historic homes continues to change. The symposium will include presentations by historic house game-changers and local historic site administrators, discussion, a boxed lunch, historic site visit, and a brainstorming workshop at a historic house museum to try out the new ideas proposed during the symposium.
Details:
This workshop is full. Please check our calendar for future offerings of this workshop.
Date: March 22, 2017
Location: Cliveden of the National Trust, Philadelphia, PA
Cost: $25 per person
Full Symposium Description:
Reinventing the Historic House Museum is a one-day symposium is designed to offer current thinking, practical information, and solutions to the challenges facing historic sites. The Historic House Museum in America is not dead nor is it dying. The field, however, needs to take time to reflect and renew as the world around our historic homes continues to change. The symposium will include presentations by historic house game-changers and local historic site administrators, discussion, a boxed lunch, historic site visit, and a brainstorming workshop at a historic house museum to try out the new ideas proposed during the symposium.
Why should I attend?
Reinventing the Historic House Museum goes beyond basic questions about Historic Houses to delve deeper into core issues regarding relevance, funding, and preparing for the future.
Here are some of issues and challenges that participants from the previous workshop have discussed:
-How to use the house’s history to tell the larger story of the city and county, as well as the house.
-Moving town museum into a historic house, so how to interpret both the house/family and town collections? How to renovate the house for museum purposes.
-What are the best ways to preserve the collections when we have no environmental controls (tarnishing of silver, textiles, rugs, photographs)?
-How to raise funds to maintain buildings at a state-owned site.
-Finding new ways to interpret the house to keep it engaging and interesting.
-How to change community perceptions of the site/museum?
-Attracting funding, developing maintenance plans and building attendance at a very rural location.
-Balancing long-term thinking versus everyday demands.
-Balancing preservation/conservation with being more available/access/education.
-Need to take a look at the bigger picture of operations and management.
-How to educate the board about the challenges and needs of museums.
-How do I better prepare students for careers in museums (particularly historic sites)?
Who should attend?
Participants in this class have ranged from emerging professionals and volunteers, to academic historians and professionals nearing the end of their careers. All have seen the value in the class and have been able to implement change at their organizations. In short, anyone who is interested in developing the skills to make their historic house interpretation and management better for their audiences and their stakeholders should attend this workshop.
Why Onsite?
Onsite workshops allow participants to not only observe the great work other institutions are doing, but also gives them a chance to network with other museum professionals. Of those who choose to attend an AASLH workshop, many make career-long connections with people who are as passionate about the field as they are.
Topics include:
What You Ought to Know about Opportunities and Threats
Led by Max van Balgooy, Principal, Engaging Places, LLC
Historic house museums face numerous challenges but figuring out which ones are serious or benign, urgent or important, temporary or long-term, isn’t easy. Max van Balgooy will present his analysis of the most important Opportunities and Threats facing historic sites in America based on the latest social and economic research, with a discussion on how they may relate to your house museum.
Reinventing the Historic House Museum
Led by Ken Turino, Manager of Community Engagement and Exhibitions, Historic New England
The purpose of this session is to provide participants with a comprehensive understanding of the rewards and challenges facing historic house museums today. Historic sites are looking for creative and sustainable ways to make themselves relevant to their communities. What is very exciting now is that many sites have risen to this challenge using different models and ways of interpreting to look beyond traditional models. The presentation will look at specific ways and examples of how historic houses have engaged with their communities, implemented creative forms of interpretation and programming as well as ways to earn income all to become more sustainable.
Each event will also include the perspective of a local historic site administrator as well as an onsite experience session at a historic house museum.
About the Faculty:
Max van Balgooy is a national leader in historical interpretation and community engagement, with extensive experience in developing solutions in collaboration with volunteers, staff, trustees, residents, scholars, design professionals, business leaders, and elected officials. A recognized researcher, author, and speaker on the trends, challenges, and opportunities facing museums, historic sites, and cultural organizations, Max uses his skills as a facilitator and consultant for developing plans for business strategy, historical interpretation, public programming, marketing, and online media. He also operates Engaging Places, LLC, a design and strategy firm that “connects people and historic places”
Kenneth Turino is Manger of Community Engagement and Exhibitions at Historic New England, the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive regional heritage organization in the country. Ken oversees community engagement projects throughout the six New England states and is responsible for the traveling exhibitions program at Historic New England. Prior to coming to Historic New England, Ken was Executive Director of the Lynn Museum, an active local history museum in Lynn, Massachusetts. He has worked at a number of historic houses including the Paul Revere House in Boston and is a Trustee of the House of Seven Gables in Salem. He frequently consults on interpretive planning and community engagement projects at historic sites. These include the Nicholas House Museum, Boston, The Hermann-Grima and Gallier Historic Houses, New Orleans, and most recently with Donna Harris on the future of the Charnley-Norwood House in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.
Visit our Calendar of Events to learn about more AASLH Continuing Education Opportunities.
This workshop is generously underwritten by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is a multidisciplinary grant maker and hub for knowledge-sharing, dedicated to fostering a vibrant cultural community in Greater Philadelphia. The Center invests in ambitious, imaginative projects that showcase the region’s cultural vitality and enhance public life, and engages in an ongoing exchange of ideas concerning artistic and interpretive practice with a broad network of cultural practitioners and leaders.
Workshop: Project Management for History Professionals
AASLH’s popular Project Management for History Professionals workshop travels to Dallas this spring! Join us March 8th and 9th, 2017 at the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.
Cost: $475 AASLH Members/ $560 Nonmembers
*Get $40 off when you register by February 1, 2017!*
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Project Management provides valuable instruction in planning, managing and successfully completing projects of all types. In this workshop, you will learn how to implement internationally recognized project management principles in a history context. Instruction will cover all of the details in the four steps to successful project management:
- Define (creating a project charter, setting initial objectives, identifying risks and constraints, and more)
- Plan (developing a schedule, budget, etc.)
- Manage (providing feedback, negotiating for resources and resolving differences)
- Review (turning over deliverables, documentation and more)
Using real project ideas, participants apply project management principles to create a project charter and scope diagram that help them return home equipped to begin or continue their project in an efficient, orderly and open manner.
Who Should Take Part in this Workshop:
Project Management is valuable training for staff at all levels. And, whether your work involves exhibitions, education and programs, planning, fundraising, collections, historic preservation or the many other tasks staff at history organizations address every day, you will leave this workshop with new skills, ideas and tools for successfully completing projects.
“Project management is usually discussed in terms of software development or construction management. It was so helpful to see its value within a humanities context. This is some of the best professional development I have ever experienced. Excellent instruction.” –2015 workshop participant
The workshop is taught by Steven Hoskins, Ph.D., author of AASLH’s Technical Leaflet (#260) “Calculating Risk: A Guide to Project Management for History Professionals.”
Register early as space is limited in this workshop.
Learn More
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Applications Due for 2017 AASLH Workshop Scholarship
AASLH offers four scholarships for individuals to attend one of our 2017 onsite workshops.
Applications must be postmarked or received by January 20, 2017 to be considered.
Email questions to: mitchell@aaslh.org.
Scholarship Types:
- New Professionals (2): New professionals must have worked in the field for three years or less.
- Diversity Fellowship (2): Diversity fellowship applicants must represent a racial or ethnic minority group in the U.S
Recipients receive registration fee reimbursement and a one year individual membership in AASLH. Recipient is responsible for his/her own transportation, lodging, and meals.
Deadline: January 20, 2017
Submit Your Application Here
Onsite Workshop: Reinventing the Historic House Museum
Reinventing the Historic House Museum
October 27, 2016
History Colorado: Denver, Colorado
Cost: $99 members/$175 nonmembers
This one-day symposium is designed to offer current thinking, practical information, and solutions to the challenges facing historic sites. The Historic House Museum in America is not dead nor is it dying. The field, however, needs to take time to reflect and renew as the world around our historic homes continues to change.
The symposium will include presentations, discussion, a boxed lunch, historic site visit, and a brainstorming workshop at a historic house museum to try out the new ideas proposed during the symposium.
Learn More
Onsite Workshop: Project Management for History Professionals
AASLH’s popular Project Management for History Professionals workshop returns to the Midwest this summer! Join us July 12-13 at the Ohio History Connection’s Ohio History Center in Columbus. In this workshop, you will learn how to implement internationally recognized project management principles in a history context. Project Management provides valuable instruction in planning, managing, and successfully completing projects at your history organization.
Learn more
Ready to Learn? 8 Upcoming Continuing Education Events You Should Know About
Upcoming in AASLH's Continuing Education Series are webinars (two are free for members), workshops, and online courses. Register today to secure you spot. Visit our online calendar for an up-to-date list of all our continuing education opportunities.
Lights, Camera, Action, Oh My! Filming At Your Historic Site
June 2, 3-4pm EST
Webinar (Historic House Call)
Cost: FREE for AASLH Members/ $40 for Nonmembers
Collections Camp: Military History
June 22-24
Workshop in Raleigh, NC
Cost: $300 AASLH Members/ $425 Nonmembers
Collections Care YOU Can Do and What to Leave to Conservators
June 22, 2-3:30pm EST
Webinar (StEPs Lab)
Cost: $25 StEPs Organizations/ $40 AASLH Members/ $115 Nonmembers
Project Management for History Professionals
July 12-13
Workshop in Columbus, OH
Cost: $475 AASLH Members/$550 Nonmembers
($40 off all registration before June 15)
Interpreting American Military History at Museums and Historic Sites
July 28, 3-4:15pm EST
Webinar
Cost: $40 AASLH Members/ $65 Nonmembers
Religion and Historic House Interpretation
August 16, 3-4pm EST
Webinar (Historic House Call)
Cost: FREE for AASLH Members/ $40 Nonmembers
(Registration opens June 1)
Project Management for History Professionals
October 17-November 11
Online Course
Cost: $350 AASLH Members / $425 Nonmembers
Basics of Archives
October 24-November18
Online Course
Cost: $85 AASLH Members/$160 Nonmembers
(Registration Opens August 1)
