Winter 2018 VAM Voice

Voice

3126 W. Cary St., #447 | Richmond, Virginia 23221-3504 | 804. 358.3170 | www.vamuseums.org | Winter 2018

Museums and Education

i VAM Fellowship:

Meet our fellows Christina and Jaclyn

Member Profile:

James Monroe Highland

FY2018 Annual Report

Contents

Director’s Corner

Director’s Corner

3

by Jennifer Thomas

Dear Colleagues,

Cover Story 4 - 5

Museums and Education

Our Mission

by Jennifer Thomas

VAM and Education

6-7

by Jennifer Thomas

8 - 10

Meet and Greet 11 Misti Furr

Technical Insert

VAM Advocacy and Leadership Fellows:

Our Vision A united museum community inspiring the world around us

VAM FY2018 Annual Report

i

The Virginia Association of Museums helps our museum community succeed.

12 - 13

Christina Vida and Jaclyn Spainhour

Member Profile 14 - 15

James Monroe Highland

by Sara Bon-Harper.,PhD

Our Governing Council President, Gretchen Bulova VP, Planning & Resources, Robert Orrison VP, Programming, Dana Puga Secretary, Paige Backus Treasurer, Jeffrey Nichols Immediate Past President, Gary Sandling Ex-Officio Members, Matthew Gibson and Jeffrey Allison

D ire c tors Nathan Stalvey

Jamie Fawcett

Andrew Coulomb

Jeffrey L. Nichols

Steven Blashfield

Scott Stroh

Jamie Bosket

Vanessa Thaxton-Ward

John Long

Robin von Seldeneck

Karen Daly

Sarah Whiting

Charles Grant

Susan Leidy

Joe Keiper, PhD

Eric S. Wilson

Margo Smith

O ur Contac ts Phone: 804. 358.3170 Fax: 804. 358.3174 www.vamuseums.org

O ur Sta ff Executive Director, Jennifer Thomas jthomas@vamuseums.org Assistant Director, Christina E. Newton cnewton@vamuseums.org Membership and Development Coordinator, Daniel Goldstein - dgoldstein@vamuseums.org Accountant, Su Thongpan su@vamuseums.org

O ur Voice The VAM Voice is a member benefit published quarterly.

VAM encourages readers to submit article proposals.

Contact the communications director for more information.

2

Winte r 2 0 1 8

As I sit here writing this letter, much of Virginia is preparing for our second big winter storm—I hope this particular season has worn itself out before our conference in Lynchburg March 23-26.

We are looking forward to a wonderful (and snow-free) adventure in the Hill City!

I hope you are planning to join us. In the meantime, grab a cup of coffee and take some time to explore this winter’s issue of the VAM Voice, which is focused on eduction. Education has long been a central focus of museums across the Commonwealth, as well as of VAM, and we wanted to take some time to highlight some great things that museums are doing to further their educational mission. We also share some details about VAM’s partnership with the Department of Education, designed to bring attention to the critical role that our museums play in the education of youth in Virginia.

Lastly, our Annual Report is included, so you can review all of VAM’s activities from last fiscal year—our 50th!!

I hope you enjoy hearing about some of the exciting programs that your colleagues are offering across the state. Then share your own program offerings online by taking a few minutes to update your profile in our new website with descriptions about your site’s educational offerings and collections focus, so that teachers can explore our new Member Directory and easily find you and the resources you provide!

Sincerely,

Jennifer Jennifer Thomas Executive Director Virginia Association of Museums

Museums and Education

Museums and Education

by Jennifer Thomas

continued from page 4

Museums have, since the innovative

William King Museum of Art

Wi nte r 2 0 1 8

Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation After fifteen minutes, teams report back on their process, any challenges faced, and their successes. With this program, students take ownership of their education, compare housing techniques between cultures brought together at Jamestown, and create memories which will last.

Summer Teacher Institute, Stratford Hall Plantation, Stratford The Stratford Hall Summer Teacher Institute is an annual residential learning opportunity for educators located on the grounds of Stratford Hall in Westmoreland County, Virginia. Since 2011, over 175 educators from across the nation have had an opportunity to engage with, and learn from, some of the nation’s leading scholars of history, geography, political science, anthropology, psychology, and economics. For the past three years, the Institute has focused on the impacts of colonization, conquest, and institutionalized slavery in Virginia.

The 2018 Institute, Slavery in Tidewater Virginia: Reality, Debate and Dissolution 1760-1865, promoted constructive and impassioned dialogue among institute participants. The 2019 Institute, Realism, Reaction, and Possibility: Reconstruction in Virginia 1865 – 1885, will be held July 24-27. Limited to 25 applicants, the Institute is sponsored by the Stella Boyle Smith Trust, which allows educators to attend free of charge.

Cover Story

work of John Cotton Dana, incorporated education as a part of their mission. Now more than ever, that focus on education has become a critical part of what museums do, and communities across the Commonwealth are benefitting from the programs and partnerships that museums are creating. For our lead article, we wanted to highlight museums—different sizes, and from different regions—who are working with teachers and schools to provide hands-on, creative learning opportunities that make their communities better.

Van Gogh Outreach Program, William King Museum of Art, Abingdon As the only American Association of Museums accredited museum in Virginia west of Roanoke, The William King Museum of Art is committed to our responsibility to deliver high quality, cutting edge art programming to the youth of Southern Appalachia.

The mission of the VanGogh Outreach program is twofold. WKMA provides SOLbased programming that assists classroom teachers in bringing their Social Studies curriculum to life. By presenting the material in multiple ways, catering to all learning styles, our program works as an introduction or review of the classroom content which helps to reinforce important facts and concepts in the students’ minds in preparation for testing.

VanGogh Outreach currently serves

over 4,000 2nd and 3rd grade students throughout Southwest Virginia.

“What Makes a Neighborhood”, The Valentine Museum, Richmond In Spring 2018 the Valentine launched “What Makes a Neighborhood” at Binford Middle School, a public school in Richmond, Virginia. This program brings Valentine educators, archival materials and resources to the classroom so students can research and create history tours about their school and neighborhood. During this multi-visit program, students developed mapping, speaking and leadership skills, made connections between past and present and increased their understanding of the role Richmond played in state and national history. Tours developed by the students included The History of Fan Pocket Parks, Segregation at Binford and Richmond Trolleys. The program culminated in students presenting their self-guided tours to each other and the community. The Valentine recently received funding from the Community Foundation to expand this project-based learning program to additional schools in the City of Richmond and surrounding counties.

Home on the James, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, Williamsburg Home on the James is one of seven “Dig Deeper” authentic learning programs offered at Jamestown Settlement and the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown. After touring the living history areas, students utilize critical and creative thinking, collaboration and communication skills to construct either a yehakin, a Powhatan Indian home, or a wattle-anddaub wall similar to those in England and West Central Africa, as they delve into the SOLs to explore how different cultures used their environment to build shelter.

Half of the students are given flexible rods and twine to construct the yehakin frame.

The other students work together to mix clay, sand, straw, and water to make a daub wall.

4

5

Farmville Tour Guide Project, Robert for individuals, families and seniors.

Russa Moton Museum, Farmville Ask a Curator, James Monroe Museum, During 2019 we will celebrate the 5th Fredericksburg anniversary of the Farmville Tour Guide It can be a challenge for a museum with Project, a partnership between the a small staff like ours to engage with stuRobert Russa Moton Museum (Moton) dents in the classroom. To overcome that and Rockingham County Public Schools challenge, The James Monroe Museum (RCPS). Beau Dickenson the Social (JMM) has created an innovative way for Studies Supervisor for RCPS started the our curator to “visit” classrooms across program in 2014. Each year students parthe country. Through our Ask a Curator ticipate in an independent study where program, teachers have the opportunity they are placed in groups of three to four. to bring our curator into the classroom Those groups each take a different topic electronically, allowing students to enrelated to the Prince Edward County gage with the curator and ask questions, civil rights story and conduct research and allowing JMM to bring the life and to become experts on their topic. The legacy of James Monroe alive by sharing project culminates each April when the artifacts and primary source documents. students travel to Farmville, Virginia to Topics relevant to Monroe’s life that can be conduct a “student-led” field experience in civil rights history. Each group gives a addressed include the Louisiana Purchase, 10-15 minute presentation in the locathe Monroe Doctrine, and the Missouri tion related to their topic. They also have Compromise. Ask a Curator sessions must the opportunity to meet and mingle with some of the individuals involved in the history. It is an experience enjoyed by the students and the community.

Kindergarten Education Program, Virginia Museum of Transportation, Roanoke Our current Kindergarten program is in its tenth successful school year, as a result of our strong relationship with the Roanoke City Public Schools Social Studies SuperJames Monroe Museum visor. Through this relationship, our staff be scheduled at least one month in adworks directly with teachers using direct vance. Required technology: computer or feedback to offer a dynamic Kindergarten tablet with a webcam and Skype or similar program. Trained education volunteer app, and strong internet connection. and staff educate the students over an My Monticello Student Outreach, Monintense two months of museum programticello, Charlottesville ming in the spring.The program’s success In 2018, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello is based on the fact that the museum galwelcomed over 5,000 Virginia students leries create a History Learning Laboratory and teachers through scholarship and for each student. Programming consists outreach programs. Included in that of a five gallery rotation with interactive number was every Albemarle County 5th learning at each stop. Amongst trains, grader, every Richmond City 4th grader, planes and automobiles kindergarteners and every Charlottesville City 2nd grader. experience the history of transportation Monticello will welcome back all Charlotthat focuses on the Virginia Standards of tesville City students and their families for Learning. Our education department profree over Martin Luther King Day holiday vides programming for Pre-Kindergarten weekend for a special celebration, tours to 12th grade learning for school groups and activities, and an exhibition of stu(public, private and home school), as well dent art showing students’ reflections as lifelong learning

Monticello on their field trip experience. Students’ art serve as a project-based-assessment (PBA) tool in schools, blending history education, STEM learning, a writing reflection, and an artistic response to what they found to be most memorable about their onsite visit. The combination of pre-visit classroom resources, an activity-based field trip, a structured post-visit art activity, and an invitation to return again, for free, with their whole family, makes this an incredibly enriching and rewarding community outreach program.

Work in Progress…, Francis Land House, Virginia Beach We want the Francis Land House in Virginia Beach to be a resource that schools actively use. How better to make that happen than to prioritize learning as we plan a new interpretation?

Usually we create exhibits first and education programs second. This time, we asked the social studies coordinators from the Virginia Beach City Public Schools to help devise a curriculum-based interpretation for the Francis Land House. Together, we are transforming it into a World War II home where visitors can fully interact with their surroundings to learn about life on the home front.

Our school partners designated different social science skills to learn in each space of the house: economic decision making, synthesis of evidence from artifacts and primary and secondary sources, analysis of bias in information sources, etc. Our job is to provide the history and materials to bring these skills to life. We’re just getting started, so stay tuned!

VAM and Education

VAM’s Professional Development

by Jennifer Thomas Working with Virginia Department of Education

past year, to meet directly with teachers. We have talked with those teachers about museums In the last two years, VAM has and what they can offer, and we developed a strong collaborative have heard from them what their relationship with the Virginia Debiggest challenges are, and what partment of Education. As standards of learning and assessments they need most. VAM staff and board members have also been change, we feel it is even more important than ever for museums meeting directly with VDOE, to find out how we can get museto be seen as crucial sources of um information more reliably educational content and primary and consistently out to school resources. VAM can be on the districts and teachers. Together, front lines as the advocate for all we determined that the best first of our museums, sharing all that step would be a focus on our new you do, and making sure that legislators, VDOE staff, and district member directory as a way to leaders all understand how critical reach teachers, and provide them museums are to the learning pro- with details about museums and their educational offerings. cess. VAM staff has been attendThe directory allows teachers to ing education conferences in the

VAM’s Professional Development

search by county, so that they can easily find museums within their district. Each museum then has space in their profile to focus on what educational offerings they provide, and give accurate contact information for teachers. It is a one-stop resource for teachers, and a free listing opportunity for our museums. (So if you haven’t logged into our new website and updated your museum’s profile, do it today so teachers can find you!!)

Conference The annual conference has been VAM’s flagship continuing education program since its inception in 1976. Attendees network and learn from their peers, and get practical education around current challenges, issues and needs in the field. This year for the first time, the conference will be a city-wide event, giving our attendees a chance to explore multiple venues in Lynchburg’s historic downtown. It will be an adventure, and I hope you can be there with us! Register now at www.vamuseums.org/conference.

Workshops VAM’s workshop series is here to work for you—each year we look at current challenges and member needs to create a season of one-day interactive workshops that help you do your job even better. This spring, workshop topics include collections care, textile conservation, oral histories, grant management, and a Lunch and Learn on Avoiding Embezzlement and Fraud. Register anytime on our website.

Certificate in Museum Management Interested in making your professional development work for you? Join the Certificate in Museum Management and begin earning credits for every workshop and conference you attend. The only continuing education program of its kind in the United States, the Certificate is designed to help you combine your continuing education into a credible, practical tool you can include on your resume and demonstrate your commitment to lifelong learning in your field. Join now!

We look forward to seeing you at the VAM 2019 Annual Conference this March!

EDUCATION

2018 Civics Summit, VDOE

Wi nte r 2 0 1 8

6

While you’re here, take time to explore our Lynchburg legacies; locations, sights and flavors that will give you an idea of why we love this city so much. Duck into our Downtown shops, take in the gorgeous architecture or visit one of our celebrated historic sites. You can even take a Batteau ride, trek our urban trails, or meet for drinks at the Skyline Rooftop Bar. We know you’ll fall in love with Lynchburg.

LY N C H B U R G V I R G I N I A . O R G

Save the Date - VAM’s 2019 Annual Conference Join us in Lynchburg March 23rd - 26th.

Thank You VAM Members

ANNUAL REPORT FY2018

VAM represents all Virginia and Washington, D.C. museums through advocacy, professional education and support. We have over 2,000 members, consisting of individuals, businesses, and organizations, which range from historic houses to botanical gardens, aquariums, zoos, children’s museums, historical societies, art museums and galleries, battlefields, military museums, and more. VAM thanks to all of our members for their support in FY2018, making our museum community the best in the nation!

Our 20 year members Thank you to the following members who have been members since 1998!

What a Year

Business Hollinger Metal Edge Museum Henricus Historical Park, Henricus Foundation James Monroe Museum & Memorial Library MacCallum More Museum & Gardens Museums of Newport News

This past year has been a very exciting one for VAM. Our fiftieth birthday gave us a chance to reflect on all that we have accomplished, and look ahead to the next 50 years. We were able to provide funding to our Virginia’s Top 10 Endangered Artifacts Program for the very first time, giving museums who participated direct funding for conservation and collections care. We also worked on a membership growth campaign, and increased our institutional membership by over 10% in preparation for the anniversary. This year also saw our 50th anniversary conference, held at the Hilton Norfolk The Main hotel in downtown Norfolk—we had an amazing turnout, and enjoyed a keynote presented by Museum Hack! Lastly, our $50 for 50 Campaign launched in March, VAM’s first real concerted fundraising push. We are looking forward to embracing the next 50 years.

Member museum stats

Ohef Sholom Temple Archives Rockbridge Historical Society Tudor Place Foundation

Leadership Level Members George Washington’s Mount Vernon Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Virginia Museum of History and Culture Virginia Museum of Natural History

New Members this fiscal year Benefactor Level Thomas Hall Business Level Communication Design DLR Group Quinn Evans Architects SEARCH, Inc YHB | CPAs & Consultants Consultant Level Hannah Ayers Jillian Columbus Individual Level Adele Johnson Alexa Straughan Alicia Hillmer Angie Thomson Anna Carneal

Thank You Benefactors!

The following individuals maintain a higher level VAM membership, allowing us to proivde free membership to students.

Contact the VAM office for information on upgrading.

Eric App Paige Backus Barbara Batson Leighann Boland Jamie Bosket Mikell Brown Gretchen Bulova Margo Carlock Roger Courtenay

Karen Daly Audrey Davis Elizabeth Davison Tracy Gillespie Linda Gouaze Charles Grant Thomas Hall Douglas Harvey Michael Henry

Anna Holloway William Kelly Twyla Kitts Melanie Mathewes Melissa Mullins Jeanne Niccolls Jeffrey Nichols William Obrochta Robert Orrison

Wi nte r 2 0 1 8

Nancy Perry Robin Reed Kym Rice Gary Sandling Alvin Schweizer Margo Smith Scott Stroh Robert Vaughan John Verrill

Dale Wheary Sarah Whiting Charlotte Whitted Heather Widen Eric Wilson

8

9

Anna Italiano Anne Timpano Ashley Spyker Bryan Ozlin Carol Polkinghorne Cathleene Hellier Chad Rexrode Charles Hodges Christina Dunn Claire Culbertson Cynthia Chavez Lamar Dale Blandford David Johnson David Le Moal Edward DuBois Elizabeth Moore Emma Crank

Eric Connor Erin Walker Gwen Dunham Heather Muir Homer Babbitt Ivy Tan Joseph Garrera Juliet Hoogland Justin Easterday Karen Hines Kim Kelley-Wagner Laura Yakulis Laurel Lewis Maggie Lovitt Margo Lentz-Meyer Maria Christina Mairena Martha Withers

Mary Lescher Meagan Carter Megan Crawford Michael Carter Michael Fawcett Michael Westfall Michelle Babyok Mike Anderson Nicole Paladeau Pamela Henne Patricia Starkey Paul Alfonse Randall Holm Regan Chancellor Rehn West Richard Chipchak Robert Harman

Rosalva Richardson Savannah Ball Steve Stuart Susan Des Jardins Susan Goodwin Susannah Melton Thomas Hay Whitney Zahar Museum Level Dunkirk-to-Dunkerque Heritage Center Mosby Heritage Area Association Rural Retreat Depot Foundation

Annual Report FY2018 STATS

Meet and Greet Misti Furr, Historic Interpreter, Frontier Culture Museum

Statement of Financial Position

M

*Modified Cash Basis

Assets

isti has been a historic interpreter/museum educator for the past 19 years, working in the Historic Triangle before coming to Frontier Culture.

Since Augusta County is her home, she is overjoyed to be able to work in this part of the state!

FY2017 FY2018

Current Assets

Cash & cash equivalents $67,750 $70,029 Investments, at fair value $172,145 $193, 861

Total Assets

$239,895

Who are your favorite authors?

My favorite authors include James Axtell (non-fiction/indigenous Interpretation), Erma Bombeck (humor/good advice), and John Irving (fiction/amusement).

$263,890

Liabilities Payroll Liabilities

$150

Net Assets

Unrestricted $237,583 Temporarily Restricted $ 2,162

$286

What’s the best part of your job?

The best part of my job is a tie between mentoring new interpreters and interacting with school children of all ages.

$251, 694 $ 11,910

Total Net Assets

$239,745

$263,604

Total Liabilities and Net Assets

$239,895 $263,890

What do you like to do in your leisure time?

When not at work, I enjoy spending time with family and friends. I also admit to doing a lot of “work” reading because I enjoy learning new things about my craft.

Blandford Rees Foundation Curtis Group Consultants Donor Search Glavé & Holmes Architecture Gropen, Inc. Hollinger Metal Edge Markel

MBA Design & Display Northern Trust RCM&D Riggs Ward Design VAM’S Advising Members Panel (AMP) Virginia Humanities

What is your alternative career choice?

I cannot imagine what I’d be doing if I weren’t an interpreter/museum educator—it’s quite literally the most emotionally and mentally satisfying career for me. I wouldn’t turn down a free, winning lottery ticket, though!!!

Virginia Tourism Corporation Willis Towers Watson

What is your involvement like with VAM? My involvement with VAM includes attending the 2017 annual conference as well as many years of collaboration and conversations with VAM members, past and present.

VAM would like to thank the following organizations for their substantial and ongoing support and commitment

Wi nte r 2 0 1 8

10

11

MISTI FURR

Thank you to our Sponsors!

VAM aDVOCACY AND LEADERSHIP fELLOWS

VAM ADVOCACY AND LEADERSHIP FELLOWS

Christina Vida and Jaclyn Spainhour

continued from page 12

social studies contest hosted by recently-renamed Virginia Museum of History & Culture and affiliated with National History Day.

Christina Keyser Vida is a native of Charleston, SC, and grew up in Jacksonville, FL. She received her B.A. in History from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA, in 2005. In 2007, Vida earned her M.A. in Early American Culture from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware. As an Assistant Curator at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, she was responsible for installing exhibits and reinterpretations of the historic Mansion and outbuildings. Vida relocated to Connecticut in 2009 and served as the Curator of Collections and Interpretation at the Windsor Historical Society, in Windsor, CT, until 2016. While there, she served as the Project Director for the award-winning restoration and reinterpretation of an entirely hands-on historic house tailored to Connecticut’s social studies curriculum. In 2017, Vida returned to the Commonwealth and coordinates Virginia History Day, a statewide

So why did I apply for VAM’s Leadership & Advocacy Fellowship? In my career, I have worked at and with local historical societies as well as medium and large museums.

Wi nte r 2 0 1 8

To start to answer that question, I have redeployed our survey and am again collecting responses from Virginia educators. The statewide survey data can be broken down by region and will help museum staffs as they make decisions about how to best use their limited resources to have the greatest impact. To supplement that data, this winter, I will be interviewing educators and museum professionals from communities around the state about what is working in their partnerships and what could be improved. These localities will be kept anonymous so that all participants can speak freely.

The result will hopefully be a toolkit of tactics that your institution can pull from (or avoid) to help meet the needs and address the wants of educators in your community. And if all it does is spark a conversation, hopefully that will get us one step closer to remaining relevant.

inclusivity and neurodiversity. This project is a passion project of mine, and this fellowship is allowing me to research how museum professionals are making accommodations within their facilities for children with ASD.

Technical Insert

Meet Christina Vida

Last winter, the Virginia Museum of History & Culture, deployed a survey to educators around the Commonwealth trying to answer the question: “How can museums better serve educators?”

If you have spent any time around museum educators, you will not be surprised that Virginia teachers chose class field trips and in-school visits as their most important museum programs. But would you have guessed that professional development opportunities came in at a strong third place? And while educators predictably selected primary sources online as their preferred museum-website resource, the runner-up was not field trip information or lesson plans, it was articles written for students. If you work in, or even around, a museum, you have likely heard some version of “it’s too expensive for students to visit.” Yet, a plurality of Virginia teachers chose “scheduling within the school day” as one of their top two barriers to working with museums.

I have learned that museums of any size can easily fall victim to both the “if we build it, they will come” mentality and the onesize-fits-all approach. For museum educators, teachers and school staff are our target audience, but they are not the heavily-surveyed retired tourists, midday lecture attendees, or weekend event guests who populate many broad studies on museum visitation. Nor does any school-museum relationship have the same set of goals and resources to achieve them. If museums want to remain relevant to schools while fulfilling their missions (and generate metrics that make funders happy), we need to ask our teachers and educators: how can we help you?

12

Meet Jaclyn Spainhour

Jaclyn Spainhour is a local author, historian, and museum professional from Norfolk, Virginia. Her first book, Gilded Age Norfolk, Virginia: Tidewater Wealth, Industry, and Propriety, highlighted the history of the Hunter House Victorian Museum, where she serves as Director. Jackie is on the national board of the Victorian Society in America, where she serves as the Chair of the Book Awards Committee and the Copy Editor for the society’s publication 19th Century. Jackie is currently working on a manuscript for the American Association for State and Local History entitled Museums and Millennials: Marketing to the Coveted Patron Generation scheduled to be published in spring of 2019. In her spare time, Jackie advocates for Autism education and awareness in honor of her son, Declan.

As a museum professional and a mother, I am consistently trying to instill a love of museums into my child. When my child was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), I found myself viewing the museum world through a different lens. I began to seek out museums that valued

13

I am in a unique position to evaluate inclusiveness in museums because of my personal connection to ASD and my first-hand experiences not only as an historic house museum professional trying to make the necessary accommodations for this group at my own institution, but also as a patron testing out those adopted changes.

It is my sincere hope that this project will educate museum professionals about ASD and inspire them to institute changes in their facilities to accommodate this growing demographic. The final result of this research will be an informative webinar featuring examples of changes made at institutions in Virginia and across the country which have proven valuable to both the ASD community and the museum itself. The goal of this webinar is to educate museum professionals about autism spectrum disorder (ASD), explain how to identify children and young adults with ASD, and offer suggestions for improving accessibility to and inclusion within museum programming for youth with ASD. In March, I will offer a poster presentation at the VAM Conference to show my progress and findings, specifically the challenges in meeting the needs of children with ASD and the rewards of doing so.

As a museum professional, you might be wondering why it is important to focus on this one disorder, and how doing so will be a benefit to your institution. According to Autism Speaks, a national organization

supporting those with ASD and the communities in which they live, nearly 1 in 59 children are diagnosed with the disorder every day. This is a very large chunk of the children museums serve with their programs and exhibits. Additionally, the majority of the parents of these children with ASD are millennials, or adults in their twenties and thirties. The millennial generation is one of the most coveted patron groups at this time; by making our museums more accessible for a large portion of their children, we are also inviting them to participate in our facilities. Finally, making accommodations for children with autism is, in many ways, no different than making accommodations for the spectrum of children who visit your facilities. Adding bean bag chairs, offering different types of crafting materials to accommodate dexterity, and creating simple, focused scavenger hunts are all examples of ways to make your museum more inviting to little ones with ASD, but they are also ways to make your museum experience better for youth in general. Making accommodations for the ASD community will make your museum not only more inclusive and neuro-diverse, but more welcoming to children and families as a whole.

I am excited to continue researching for this project and to share my findings with you. Please feel free to send me any comments or suggestions for this project by emailing hhvm1894@gmail.com.

I hope you will stop by and see me at the VAM Conference in March. See you in Lynchburg!

i

Find out more about our fellowship program at https://www.vamuseums.org/leadership-and-advocacy-fellowship

New History at James Monroe’s Highland

New History at James Monroe’s Highland

by Sara Bon-Harper., Ph.D., Executive Director

continued from page 14

N

early three years ago James Monroe’s Highland presented new research results and revised its public site interpretation.

We had discovered that the historic home of the fifth U.S. President had been entirely destroyed by fire in the nineteenth century, and that its foundations are now preserved as a set of archaeological remains on the property. The standing house is not, as long believed, a wing of the main house built in 1799, but a separate guesthouse built in 1818. This was as exciting for us—we who led the research that prompted the discovery—as it was for the public who had accepted then-current wisdom that Monroe’s home fit his ambitions and means in its modest scale. That particular “wisdom” was untrue though.

It’s hard to imagine a more ambitious politician than James Monroe, whose list of elected offices was long, and whose family held land, status, and legal ownership of enslaved people in Westmoreland County, Virginia. It seems that the misinterpreted house had led to a misinterpreted historic figure. ur discovery and research announcement signaled that it was time to revise history.

We rolled out the new research and the emphasis on discovery right away.

In addition, during 2018 we began employing new technology to share Highland’s stories. We are among the first historic sites in the U.S. to use wearable augmented reality (AR) in site interpretation. The premise of AR is that it adds elements to the user’s field of view, while keeping the place-centered experience. This is an ideal format for a historic site, where our mission is to help visitors imagine now-invisible realities. In our case, the

O

from their wives on their home plantation in Loudoun County. Presenting Hannah and Nelson’s viewpoint first is central to Highland’s efforts to revise not only history, but how it is told.

AR tour we developed with Richmond-based ARtGlass US provides two main elements that are not currently visible on the landscape—the destroyed 1799 main house, and individuals who inhabited Highland during the 1810s.

The user’s exploration of the archaeological research we conducted leads to a 3-D rendering of main house, from conjectural drawings based on evidence from our excavations and comparisons with other Virginia homes of the time. The user experiences the house in its correct location, seeing views from different angles.

The individuals now gone from the landscape are brought back through AR in animated drawings. The choice to use hand drawings rather than live actor video is meant to evoke the imagination, to allude to the clear knowledge that we can’t entirely represent those individuals, enslaved and free, yet we can invite visitors to learn about them, their experiences, and their roles in our shared history. The historic figures include enslaved women and an enslaved man, an overseer, Monroe’s wife and granddaughter, as well as James Monroe, both as plantation owner and statesman.

We hope that employing new technology reflects our intent to reach new and different audiences at Highland, and that reconsidering the perspectives from which history is told makes history both more accurate and more relevant.

VAM would like to thank Dorfman for their support of Virginia’s museums.

DORFMAN MUSEUM FIGURES, INC.

or Monroe’s reference to the house he ordered built for his visitors, the house is introduced by Hannah, an enslaved cook, and Nelson, and enslaved blackmith.

The AR-experiencing visitor to Highland overhears Hannah and Nelson discussing Peter Malorry and George, enslaved men who built the house, and their experience at Highland being separated

Realissc Figures since 1957.

Dorfman Conservaaon Forms created exclusively with Ethafoam® brand inert polyethylene foam.

If I were to choose one element of the new technology and narratives that most expresses our direction in public interpretation, I would point to the way the AR tour presents the standing house, now identified as the 1818 guesthouse. Instead of offering a research perspective,

Wi nte r 2 0 1 8

Conservaaon Forms since 1996.

www.museumfigures.com

14

15

800-634-4873