The Old Manse

What makes the Old Manse a special place?

“Built in 1770 for patriot minister William Emerson, The Old Manse, a National Historic Landmark, became the center of Concord’s political, literary, and social revolutions over the course of the next century. In the mid-19th-century, leading Transcendentalists such as Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller discussed the issues of the day here, with the Hawthorne and Ripley families.

A handsome Georgian clapboard building, The Old Manse sits near the banks of the Concord River among rolling fields edged by centuries-old stone walls and graced by an orchard. From upstairs, you can look out over the North Bridge, where the famous battle of April 19, 1775, took place. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne both called the Manse home for a time – and each found inspiration here. Emerson would draft his famous essay “Nature” from an upstairs room, and Hawthorne would write a tribute to the homestead called Mosses from an Old Manse. Hawthorne and his wife, Sophia, started their married life here, and you can still see the poems they wrote to each other, etched on the Manse’s window panes. The heirloom vegetable garden, which has been recreated today, was originally planted by Henry David Thoreau in honor of the Hawthornes’ wedding.“

Using the questions from the Jörgensen article as guidelines I have looked at the resources available online as well as interviewed the site manager, Tom Beardsley, to determine how The Old Manse has been operating.

1. Characteristics of collecting institutions. What are their governance structures? What services do they offer and what functions do they serve?
1. The Old Manse is run by The Trustees, on their web page they have a section specifically on their governing structure. Their governance structure consists of the following groups of volunteers:
1. Board of Directors
2. Advisory Board
3. Corporate Trustees
4. Life Trustees
5. Chairman's Council
2. The Old Manse site currently has 20 staff members, 10 volunteers and 10 actual staff.
3. In addition to the regular guided tours there are a variety of special events and programming scheduled throughout the year and the grounds can also be rented out for private functions and weddings.
2. Types of collections. What are the types of collections held by the institutions? What is the composition of their holdings? Which collections are significant or notable?
1. The Old Manse’s collections are varied and include religious items and artwork, books and print materials, as well as furniture pieces.
2. The items that Tom the site manager said were most notable were the original desk where Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote Nature (1836) and Nathanial Hawthorne’s desk where he wrote Mosses from an Old Manse (1846). Within their print collection he noted that they have a Martin Luther Imprint dated to 1590, the oldest item in their collection. The most important thing that Tom said about the collection and what makes it so important and the home so unique  is that 90% of the items within the home are original. A quote Tom said multiple times throughout my visit was by Ralph Waldo Emerson, “All history is biography.” When you walk in you can just sense the history within the house and there are so many stories that can be told. We spent almost 20 minutes just in the kitchen talking about the kitchen table and the chairs surrounding it. Every single piece is from a different period and all original to the home. The story can be told in so many different ways and it truly is fascinating.
   
   Emerson's desk
   
   
   
   Hawthorne's desk
3. Condition of collections. Is the condition of these collections known? If so, what is their condition? How accessible are they? What circumstances limit their accessibility?
1. From what I could gather almost all of the print materials are currently stored at the Archival and Research Center (ARC). The center was opened in Sharon in 2008 and appears to only be available through appointment only. The Old Manse received a 3 year grant for $53,400 to catalog more than 2,100 books, conserve 25-30 books, create storage boxes for 250 books, repair three historic bookshelves, and conserve nine pieces of framed art from the collection. According to Tom this is taking place at the ARC. I did ask if the items were being digitized as well as catalogued and he said that they were however I could not locate them online after my visit. I was able to find a finding aid but that took a lot of digging to locate. The ARC site does not seem set up at all and even Tom stated it was “clunky”. He gave me the name of Christie Jackson who is the statewide curator and Alison (no last name given) to contact in regards of the collection.
4. Environmental controls. What environmental controls are in place? What percentage of the collections is held in environmentally adequate conditions, where factors such as temperature, light, and humidity can be controlled? What are the most pressing environmental concerns?
1. As The Old Manse is a historical house not a lot of structural changes can be made to provide efficient environmental control. Currently 90% of the collection is held in environmentally adequate conditions according to Tom. The remaining 10% are items like the grandfather clock (currently undergoing conservation treatments at ARC), a few paintings (also being conserved at ARC thanks to their recent grant), and the square grand piano. The interesting thing about the piano and why he counts it in the “10%” is that it needs to be watched very carefully and actually needs to be “exercised” regularly. They encourage guests to play at the piano when visiting to ensure that the strings remain flexible.
2. They do try and do temperature control and are planning on adding a protective film to some of the windows in the attic, specifically in the rooms where there are pencil drawings on the walls to prevent UV light from affecting those. He also mentioned that they are going to be getting a humidistat system and the venting throughout the house will be updated to aid in controlling the humidity.
5. Preservation and disaster planning. What preservation and disaster planning documents exist? What preservation and disaster planning efforts are underway? Are written plans part of the mission of the institution? What training has been done or is available?
1. As The Old Manse is managed by The Trustees preservation and disaster plans are required, he didn’t go into too much detail in regards to what they entail or if they were located digitally anywhere. Preservation is the item listed in The Trustees’ mission statement, “The Trustees of Reservations preserves, for public use and enjoyment, properties of exceptional scenic, historic, and ecological value throughout Massachusetts and protects special places across the state."
2. There is a written management plan for The Old Manse online. According to Tom it was initially drafted in 2010 however it is constantly being updated.
6. Critical institutional priorities. What are the most critical institutional priorities related to collections? Are there resources to accomplish these? What methods are used to keep staff current on issues of professional practice?
1. At this time the most critical institutional priorities are preservation. With the grant they received in 2015 they are on the right track to getting the collection to where they want it to be.
2. Tom was also very excited to show me the plans for the new welcome center that will be built within the next 18 months. On the website it has this nice little blurb about it: “The Trustees has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant in the amount of $450,000, which will help fund the construction of a Welcome Center here at The Old Manse. This past summer, The Trustees also secured funding support through a $500,000 Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund grant. Once funding for the entire project is complete, we plan to build a Welcome Center on the foundations of an 18th-century barn, built to the same scale, which stood on the property between 1774 and 1924. The new Welcome Center will help us expand indoor tours, interactive programs, exhibits, events and visitor amenities. The new space will include interpretive display areas, programming and workshop space, visitor restrooms, seating and food service, staff office space, and space for private and public events.”
3. In regards to keeping the staff updated and current he says that they have training sessions every 2-3 months and do visits to other institutions to keep informed.

I am so thrilled to have gotten the chance to go through the house with Tom. He was so knowledgeable and excited to show me around and discuss all the work that they’ve been doing that it made the experience so much better. I can’t wait to reach out to Christie and Alison at ARC and get an additional look at how The Old Manse is handling their collections.









~Sources have been hyperlinked~

Harriet Beecher Stowe Center Assessment

            The way an institution uses its resources to convey information can come in not only multiple formats for the resources themselves but also how these items are used to present information.  With historic house museums there is a standard format that tends to be followed: come look at this old house filled with old stuff that belonged to person X and Y, and hear a bit of history about the person, place, or thing.  As the times change many of these presentations are beginning to move into new territory.  There is the standard tour and collections of the institution, but public and educational programming, as well as a social media and web presence, are key to a museum’s visibility.  For this study I returned to the museum that gave me my “in” to the cultural heritage world, the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, Connecticut.  Currently, the home of Mrs. Stowe herself is undergoing a massive interior preservation, restoration, and reinterpretation of the author’s story.  This study will examine how the Stowe Center is delivering its information to the public with its arguable main attraction “out of commission” and how it may differ from the presentation when the house was still open.  This will include public and school programs, the tour, media (digital and analog), partnerships, and collections access.  Finally, we will see how well these various aspects fall in line with the Stowe Center mission statement that it “preserves and interprets Stowe's Hartford home and the Center's historic collections, promotes vibrant discussion of her life and work, and inspires commitment to social justice and positive change.”

            The first portion that we will examine is the programming portion of the Stowe Center.  Over the years, this has become a driving way for the Center to present on its mission in conjunction with the more typical house tour.  These take various formats between public and school focused, but the Salon series has been highly dominant.   Billed as a “safe place for hard discussions” the Salons at Stowe are conversation series’ with a moderator and guest that has a level of expertise on the topic.  These can vary from discussions on race, sex, and gender to juvenile and environmental justice and there popularity can’t be denied since attendance rose 150 percent in 2015.  A tremendous amount of information is conveyed during these two hour events, but a Program Assistant I spoke with stated that the mission connection for all of these are very loose and can be connected to Stowe herself in a relative way.  Did the author speak about gender? Sure she did, but what about modern topics like trans people? Nope.  When I inquired about whether a person attending an event would glean anything about Stowe herself and why this institution is hosting an event on certain topics, it was met with an emphatic no.  The Salons have been a great success and helped with the museums visibility, but is it delivering on its mission?  The second part perhaps, but if there is a lack of public understanding about the person whose legacy is being used to deliver this type of information (while ignoring a lifetime of her story) can it really be fully accomplishing its mission?  The Center is doing well in the public eye so there is success, but there is also compromise.

The Salons have grown to lunchtime lectures and an increasingly popular school program, both of which cover more recent topics such as the Flint crisis and other social justice oriented stories.  These are increasing awareness amongst a younger audience of social justice issues, but when asked if they teach that crowd about Stowe?  Another no.  Now the Stowe Center does offer a variety of school programs that could be delivered on or off-site, so the situation with the house renovation has not had a tremendous impact other than space with really big groups, I was told by some staff.  Therefore the information could be delivered in the same way, but the bad news is that the more historical Stowe oriented programs that use primary sources and have a deliverable expectation from the students (so you know, it’s still school and not a field trip/day to slack off) have been marginalized.  The school programs being pushed and ordered by teachers are the Salon and modern day social justice oriented programs that are light on history according to staff.  The more history oriented program that is delivered the most is actually done in partnership with the Mark Twain House and Museum next door.  Effecting Social Change (ESC), a personal favorite program, basically tells the story of slavery and racial prejudice prior and during the respective authors’ lifetimes and paints a contextual picture of their major works, and finally their legacy.  It is through this collaborative program that the Stowe Center appears to deliver most on the entirety of its mission.        

Partnerships like the one that exists between the Twain and Stowe museums are another way that an institution conveys information to the public.  One of the most respectable aspects to the Stowe Center is its focus on forging local relationships to further their mission.  Since the mission is rather broad, the collaborations can serve on any purpose that the Center sees fit.  If it is more along the lines of books and history there is the Twain House and the local branch of the public library, if it is on race, gender, or other social justice topics there are multiple partnerships that they have forged with the YWCA, the Amistad Center, Aurora Women and Girls Foundation, Community Partners in Action, CT Juvenile Justice Alliance, Metro Hartford Progress Points, Organize Parents Make a Difference, local church organizations, universities, and the city of Hartford.  While all of these partnerships help the Stowe Center to deliver information to the public about itself, it does show which part of the mission has been a priority focus.  Of the seventeen official Stowe Center Partners in 2015 only six fall under cultural heritage or historic organization, which seems par for the course.  During my time at the Stowe Center I was told to stop pursuing a relationship with Connecticut League of History Organizations because they are too small and do not help the museum.  There is the impression that social justice is what the Stowe Center wants and the historic or traditional museum aspect is used for convenience when necessary.  This is even more evident when looking at the Stowe Center 2015 in review brochure where the mission statement was broken into its 3 main parts and then reconstructed to put social justice first, preserver and interpret second, and leave the vibrant discussion of Mrs. Stowe’s life to the bottom.

One of the oldest ways that an institution communicates information about itself is through mailing brochures and newsletters like the one mentioned above.  However, technology has marginalized these in favor of the “e-blast” and social media strategies.  The Stowe Center social media has become a more visible presence with not only live tweeting during programs, but also retweeting relative topics, and posting more frequently about its own events on Twitter and Facebook.  This year alone has seen more activity on social media than the almost two years prior to it.  My discussion with a Program Assistant informed me that the new Marketing Director is making sure that the Center’s social media strategy is in line with best practices and more importantly, is not withholding access to the accounts.  This allows Programming to post about their events before, during, and after they happen in a more timely fashion.  One aspect that has been lacking in their use of digital media is any mention of the house being off limits due to the preservation project.  A retweet from April 21, originally by History at Play, tells people to visit the Stowe House when in Hartford with pictures of her, the home, and then an interior shot of another house on the property.  There is no indication given about the status of the house and what a site visit now means.  This lack of information is deceitful and comes from a place of fear.  During two years as Visitor Services Manager, we discussed terminology to use so that we never had to say closed.  Three years later and the Center still refuses to call a spade a spade.  The most recent e-newsletter received from the Stowe Center, also on April 21, is from the Executive Director and this is how the Center is explaining the situation of the house to the public:

“It's an exciting time in Harriet Beecher Stowe Center's history. For the first time since opening in 1968, the 1871 Stowe House is undergoing extensive interior preservation including new climate systems, state-of-the-art fire suppression and historic windows restoration.  The Stowe Center remains open while work is completed. Through spring 2017, our interactive tour takes place in two other buildings on campus: the 1873 Stowe Visitor Center and 1884 Katharine Seymour Day House, featuring significant artifacts and furnishings from the Stowe House.” [emphasis original]

It then goes on to ask for donations and to spread the word.  What word?  If I was a casual visitor and saw this it would not be clear that the house of Harriet Beecher Stowe, famed author, that Bob traveled all the way from Texarkana to see is closed and he cannot see it.  And this is only if Bob from Texarkana is on the email list; if he visited the museum website, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, or Tumblr he would not know that the house is closed since the Center has decided not to make this terribly important information for visitors one hundred percent public.  This is what it says on the website: “During Stowe House preservation, Stowe Center admission includes two historic buildings on the property: the 1873 Visitor Center and the 1884 Katharine Seymour Day House…an architectural gem rarely open for tours.”  I think this would make Bob think that he gets two more tours than just the Stowe House tour.  This summer when the largest number of casual visitors come to the museum will prove how wise this strategy is.  There is already early evidence on Trip Advisor from March 7 that read: “The house was closed but nowhere does it say this on their site. They charged us $14 to get a tour of two rooms in another house. It was not very informative and only lasted 30 minutes. What a rip-off.” This review and my visit to the site led me to believe that withholding information and not clearly explaining a situation like this may be a mistake.

The Tour is the biggest way that historic homes deliver information about themselves.  It is usually seen as forty-five minute history lecture about the person, place, and things, and is a big source of revenue for the institutions.  The Stowe Center currently bills the visit as a “site tour” and the price given by the review above is actually a two dollar increase from when the home was open and full of collections.  On the day I visited the first floor of the Stowe House was still being shown, though it was completely void of anything historic other than the reproduction wallpaper from the 1960s; the main part of the experience was in the Visitor Center and the Chamberlain-Day House.  I will address each of these through my experience from arrival to the end of the tour and all the ways, obvious or not, that the Stowe Center is conveying information about itself.

The most important information to a visitor is where is this place and what do I do when I arrive.  The Stowe Center sits on the corner of Farmington Avenue and Forest Street with large signs on each proclaiming that you have not only arrived at the Stowe Center but the first home is the Day House, the second one is the Stowe House, and then the all-important parking.  At each of the foot exits of the parking lot are little mailboxes containing site guides that have a map and tour, programming, and other institutional information.  The front is all about the new experience and informs the visitor of the preservation work, but again does not outright state the condition of the house being closed!  It is only when entering the Visitor Center and inquiring about a tour that an individual is clearly told about the access level to the house being zilch, but the other aspects were well highlighted to manage expectations.  Basically it was “you can’t go in the House, but you can still learn and see some cool stuff over here” speech that is a basic of museum customer service and very important to learn.  There were several guests I saw engage with employees and when the word closed was used or what was available was not highlighted, people left. The visitors that I spoke with were not aware of the Stowe House being closed and the new experience, but for the most part they did not care because when they arrived it was clearly explained to them.  This is more evidence that not declaring outright what is happening to your main attraction is a bad move. The tour experience then begins in the former gallery space, with a brief reasoning on the new experience, and is loosely set up for the discussion points of Social Justice, Inspiration, Relevancy, and Biography.  The first two are covered heavily in the first ten minutes as a way to establish the new focus of Stowe’s work Uncle Tom’s Cabin (UTC) and how that can be used to inspire change.  Then the visitor is directed toward a wall of famous people’s quotes relating to UTC from its publication to present day before being shown a panel with Stowe’s quote on why she wrote it.  At this point it is twenty minutes in and I have learned nothing about Harriet Beecher Stowe’s life.  The last ten minutes are used to quickly convey Stowe’s early life and what led to her writing UTC in the first place. 

Next, visitors are whisked over to the Day House to learn more about Stowe’s time, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and its cultural impact and lasting legacy, and more inspiration.  This portion was about thirty minutes and had three rooms on the first floor of the Day House.  First visitors are sat in a reproduction parlor with repro documents of broadsides, pamphlets, and books about slavery and abolition from Stowe’s period and then the visitor is asked to discuss them and their reactions.  Very little information about Stowe’s life, or the mission, is conveyed during this time.  Honestly, the only information I got out of this time was how ignorant people are of the past.  We are then moved to a larger room with several writing desks, cases with Uncle Tom memorabilia in them, and it is here that the cultural impact of the book and its material culture are discussed.  The aim here it seems is to show how big a deal this was and then show how society warped the character of Uncle Tom into a racial epithet (basically the feeling is that they are trying to “take back” the term Uncle Tom).  The final stop is a case with gifts Stowe received from overseas and a table in the main hall with other visitor’s writings about how to pursue social justice today like Stowe did in her day.  The experience, for now, finishes in the empty Stowe House where the preservation project is discussed in greater detail and ends with a donation plug.  Even this information is not clearly delivered since another Trip Advisor review was under the impression that the two buildings they visited were “complete” and that the Stowe House was still under construction. 

There is a ton of information covered in the hour or so tour experience, but the Stowe Center represents itself as being lacking in collections and heavy on modern issue.  The overall impression I received, having never taken this tour but knowing her life, was that Stowe did nothing after Uncle Tom’s Cabin, it was tremendously successful, and this museum exists only to show how this one book should inspire others to take up a pen, or whatever, and change the world.  All of this information given does fall in with the mission of the museum, so in that sense the tour is a successful fulfillment of the mission; more so than the public programs discussed earlier according to the Program Assistant and Guides I spoke with.  However, not providing historical context by withholding information is something I find egregious.  Certainly the average visitor does not know, or maybe even care, but when they have a strong reaction (meaning their reaction is informed by modern ideas) that is not discussed in context people get a wrong idea about history.  Some examples were portraying Stowe writing as a struggling mother scraping together time between nursing, womanly duties, and child bearing to write UTC; she had money, help, and even writes about all the assistance she received to free up time to write her books.  Another even worse misinformation is leading visitors to believe that Uncle Tom’s Cabin ignited social justice sentiment in England, a country that had abolished slavery and was at the time working to fix societal ills that America still hasn’t corrected.  Stowe’s own racial ideology is not fully explained or contextualized.  The Stowe Center shoots these down as cultural misinterpretations when it is widely recognized across multiple fields that Stowe’s characters are racial stereotypes, just not the ones we are accustomed to from the Reconstruction era, but of a less covered period in US racial history.  It almost seems like the Stowe Center’s mission as it relates to history is passive.  Aspects of her biography like marriage, her children, and the other twenty-nine books she wrote that seem like normal topics to cover in a tour of an author’s home, were only addressed when visitors asked.  The final insult is that the twenty-three years Harriet Beecher Stowe lived in this home, and the thirty plus she lived in Hartford, are not discussed at all.  In comparison, a visitor to the Mark Twain House and Museum need only walk through the two exhibits, for free, in their visitor center to answer these types of questions; the tour there is for the historic house enthusiast and “Twainiacs.”

The Stowe Center attempts to meet its mission statement in various ways, but one of the driving parts of why the institution exists in the first place is the collections it holds.  The collections are not on heavy display since the house is closed, but that portion of the collection was less than half of the total assets held by the museum.  There are over 200,000 items in the research collections that are not used for the current delivery on the Stowe Center site.  These items though can be accessed by anyone as long as they make an appointment for Monday to Friday between 9:30 and 4:30 and bring photo identification.  This isn’t the best level of access nor is the above information clearly stated online, but this is pretty typical for a research collection at a museum of this size.  There are some collections that can be found online: the library catalogue can be searched only and Uncle Tom’s Cabin Collection materials (decorative arts, ephemera, printed materials) are exhibited on the website “Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture”.  The lack of an online collections presence is not surprising as the Stowe Center is somewhat behind on the digital technologies; David Williams would find them to still be in the early history of use of computers and digital tools for museums.  It should also be noted that while the Stowe Center has many partnerships there is not semblance of a MOAC situation emerging any time soon.

When you look at the variety of the collections available, one may get the impression that the information being shared by the Stowe Center in terms of public offerings is dwindling.  The highlights given by the Stowe Center website are:

·         Broad collection of Harriet Beecher Stowe's personal correspondence, including the E. Bruce Kirkham Collection of annotated Stowe letters (1822-1895), sketchbooks, diaries, journals, and literary manuscripts.

·         First editions of Harriet Beecher Stowe's works, and the Uncle Tom's Cabin collection which includes most American and foreign language editions, interpretation and criticism, pamphlets, broadsides, and images of Stowe's most famous anti-slavery novel from 1851 to the present.

·         Extensive collection of Beecher/Stowe family correspondence and works by Lyman Beecher, Catharine E. Beecher, Henry Ward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Thomas K. Beecher, and Calvin E. Stowe, among others.

·         Personal correspondence, diaries, journals and literary manuscripts by Stowe's Nook Farm neighbors.

·         Specialized collections on: 19th-century women's history, especially the votes for women movement; 19th-century slavery & 19th-century architecture and decorative arts, especially of the Greater Hartford area.

·         Letters from William Lloyd Garrison, the Duchess of Sutherland, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony.

·         Rare works by Hartford's Lydia Huntley Sigourney

·         Photographs associated with Stowe, Nook Farm residents, Katharine Day, members of the Beecher family, and 19th- and 20th-century Hartford architecture

The modern take on the Stowe experience only addresses the first two bullet points, and the Kirkham Collection actually walks a fine line in terms of ethics since it is transcribed letters from other institutions (they are research only, cannot be used in publication).  Speaking from experience, the Stowe Center at one time offered a differently themed tour each month to address the rest of the rich and culturally valuable collection.  It is sad that the collections have been marginalized to a degree since they are a department that does a lot with a little.  The collections are governed by a collections policy adopted in 2010, which guides acquisition, accession, cataloging, inventory, loans, deaccession, planning, access, conservation and care.  Within the policy the major duties are divided between the Executive Director, Collections staff, and Board’s Building & Collections Committee who are responsible for broader acquisition, deaccession, and planning decisions, while Collections staff is responsible for maintaining day to day activities like accession, cataloging, inventory, loans, access, conservation, care and storage. Almost ninety-five percent of the collection is in adequate housing (HVAC, Moisture control, acid-free, etc.).  The rest is kept in unconditioned environments and those are a concern, however care has been taken to store more robust collections items in uncontrolled storage areas. To stay up on best practices the collections staff regularly attends  workshops, maintains memberships/subscriptions/listservs with national museum/library organizations, and as the Collections Manager said, talk to former colleagues that have gone to other organizations.  They also have a well maintained disaster plan that is reviewed annually and training is done before natural events and/or after the annual review.  I asked the Collections Manager if the plan had been altered considering the changes to the storage areas, the house, and their contents and unfortunately no plan is in place officially, but she and the assistant have been preparing contingencies just in case.  Unfortunately internal access has declined due to a new Visitor Services Manager stating that Visitor Center staff is not to go to the Day House (where all the collections are) unless summoned.  This is an ultimate sin because it is a clear example of the institution stifling internal information sharing to limit what can be shared with the public so as to ally more closely with social justice portion of the mission.

            Examining the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center to see how it conveys information to the public in cooperation with its mission statement has been frustrating at times because of how they pick and choose what part of the mission to focus on when it seem most convenient.  When an institution is holding important cultural collections in the public trust, at what point do we look at them and judge how well they are sharing that information?  We have best practices and professional standards for most everything, but there is not yet a point at which we look at historic museums and say they are failing to deliver to the public the full potential of information held in their collections.  However, with that said, the Stowe Center does deliver information to the public as it relates to their mission and for now it seems that is good enough.

           

References

Chandler, Robin. “Museums in the Online Archive of California (MOAC): Building digital collections across libraries and museums.” First Monday 7, no. 5 (2002).

Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.  “Preserving the Past, Shaping the Future, Hartford, Connecticut Special Tour During Stowe House Preservation.” Brochure, Hartford, CT, Winter 2016.

-. “Harriet Beecher Stowe Center uses Stowe’s life and work to inspire YOU to change your world.” Brochure, Spring/Sumer 2016.

-. “Harriet Beecher Stowe Center 2015 Year in Review.” Brochure, Hartford, CT, 2016.

-. Site Guide, Hartford, CT, April 2016.

-. Institutional websites, www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org, https://twitter.com/HBStoweCenter,   https://www.facebook.com/HarrietBeecherStowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe Center and the Mark Twain House and Museum. “Two National Historic Landmarks, One Great Field Trip: Field Trip and School Program Guide.” Brochure, Hartford, CT, 2015.

Interview with Maura Hallisey, Program Assistant, Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.  Conducted April 18, 2016.

Interview with Elizabeth Burgess, Collections Manager, Harriet Becher Stowe Center. Conducted via email, April 26, 2016.

Notes from Site Visit conducted April 23, 2016. Includes observations, tour notes, and interviews with staff members Anastasia Thibault, Christina Rewinski, and Katie Doe and four anonymous visitors.

Trip Advisor Reviews of the Stowe Center, https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g33804-d105003-Reviews-Harriet_Beecher_Stowe_Center-Hartford_Connecticut.html.

Williams, David. “A Brief History of Museum Computerization,” in Museums in a Digital Age, Ross Parry, Ed. (Routledge, 2010), 13-20.

Final Report - The Preservation Society of Newport County

In part one of my report on the Newport Mansions, I focused primarily on the Chateau Sur Mer. This time around, I’ll be looking more broadly at the entire milieu of houses and collections owned and maintained by the Preservation Society of Newport County. My own visits to the Newport Mansions informed my approach to this report. For further details on their collections and internal operations, I perused their website, referred to their 2014-15 State of the Collections Report, and conducted an informational interview with a recent intern working at their archives.

Governance and Services

The Preservation Society of Newport County is governed hierarchically, with a Board of Trustees at the top, a Chief Executive Officer below them, and a Chief of Staff below her. Under these administrators there are eight departments, each with its own Department Head. The departments are: Finance, Development, Museum Affairs, Museum Experience, Properties, Gardens & Grounds, Retail Sales, and Special Events. In this report, I will be focusing primarily on the Museum Affairs and Museum experience departments, given the focus of this class.

The Preservation Society’s mission is “to protect, preserve, and present an exceptional collection of house museums and landscapes in one of the most historically intact cities in America.” To that end, they provide a variety of services. They preserve and maintain eleven historical houses and make them available to the public. At their houses they provide guided tours and educational materials that give historical context for the houses and the objects contained therein. They maintain an archival collection of documents, artwork, and dresses related to the house. They host events and exhibitions that engage with the local community.

About Their Collections

The Preservation Society holds three main collections:

The Fine and Decorative Arts collection contains paintings, furniture, and other objects “collected by the late owners of the houses.” Though their website gives no indication of it, the guide on a tour I took of the Chateau Sur Mer pointed out several pieces that were never actually owned by a former resident of the house. This collection contains several objects that date back to the time period during which the houses were built and which fit in well with the style of their décor, but which never actually appeared in the houses during that time.

The Textile and Fashion Arts collection contains historical clothing, textiles, and accessories related to the houses’ owners and the styles of their times. The collection’s objects mostly hail from the 1880’s through the 1920’s, though there are objects from other periods that represent other eras of Newport’s fashion history.

The Archival Collection is a combination of institutional archives and special collections. It contains historical records useful in understanding the history of the houses, their owners, and Newport itself. According to my interviewee, “there are collections on the families (photos, letters, scrapbooks, personal papers), on the houses (blueprints, repairs, etc), and on various other subjects.”

The houses themselves are the most notable items in the Newport Preservation Society’s collection, with the Breakers standing out as particularly popular and historically resonant. The houses were built and renovated by historically significant architects, and exemplify various schools of architecture. The houses contain works of art by several noteworthy artists, including a painting by Mary Cassatt, an opalescent stained glass ceiling by John La Farge, and a portrait by John Singer Sargent.

Condition of Collections

The Newport Mansions are all over one hundred years old, and as such they are quite challenging to maintain. There are usually only a handful of the houses open at any given time, allowing staff to conduct restoration activities year round. There is a clear hierarchy when it comes to allocating resources to maintaining houses and keeping them open. For example, The Breakers, being the most famous and trafficked of the houses, is open for entirety of 2016. Less well known houses, and those in more critical condition are only open for part of the year.

The current state of the Preservation Society’s archival collections is unclear. Things appear to be on the upswing though – the Preservation Society hired an archivist in August of 2015. He is the first archivist they’ve had working on the collection in several years. He is currently working on processing the collection, and there is still a ways to go before the entirety is processed.

The archives does not keep open hours, but members of the public hoping to see specific items in the collection can reach out to the archivist for an appointment. The archives uses a meeting room in the building as their reading room, and the archivist brings requested materials there for researchers to peruse. He is also willing to digitize items and share the resulting files with researchers upon request.

Online access to the Preservation Society’s collections is limited. Only the Fine and Decorative Arts collection has information online about specific holdings, and even that is very basic. There are three pages on their website describing their holdings: one for paintings, one for furniture, and one for decorative arts. Each of those pages only lists a small selection of “highlights,” less than ten objects on each page. Each object has a paragraph description accompanied by a very small low-res image. Their online exhibition gallery also includes some low-res images of collection items and information about them as part of online exhibits.

Fortunately, the Preservation Society has collaborated with several other local cultural heritage organizations to put together Newportal, a publicly accessible online database featuring objects from each organization’s collections. The site launched just a few days ago, on April 27^th. It is attractive, usable, and contains much more robust collections information than the Preservation Society’s website, with reasonably thorough metadata. There are currently only 100 items from the Preservation Society’s collections on there, but there are plans to add more over time.

Environment

One of the most insidious environmental threats to the Newport Mansions is the general dampness of their surroundings. The houses are located on the coast, and are susceptible to rough weather and high humidity.  

Beyond that, they are currently working to figure out what their most pressing concerns are. This year they have implemented a preventive conservation program to “monitor conditions, identify priorities and oversee day-to-day collections.”

All of the houses have humidity and temperature monitors active in various rooms throughout the premises to ensure a safe climate. Conservation actions are undertaken on objects and fixtures that have undergone significant degradation. For example, the ceiling at the Chateau Sur Mer was recently refurbished. The archives is also climate controlled, and measures to prevent pest infestation are carried out routinely.

Preservation and Disaster Planning

I was not able to find a lot of information about the Preservation Society’s disaster planning, but it is clear that they do have a set of policies. This 2007 article discusses their efforts at hurricane preparedness planning. Their plan involved monitoring the weather, prioritizing high-value and high-risk assets, moving objects and shuttering windows, documenting damage, and re-evaluating inventories after each storm. While I was unable to find more up-to-date specifics, their most recent State of the Collections report mentioned that they were working on the “drafting of an inter-departmental disaster response plan that identifies chain of command, resources available and needed, and procedures for prevention of loss, loss recovery, and collections safeguarding in the event of damage or disaster.”

Critical Institutional Priorities

The intern I interviewed told me that from her point of view, the most critical priorities of the Preservation Society in terms of their collections are their conservation efforts and their mission to obtain objects that are original to the houses but outside of their control.  From my own studies of the Preservation Society, I also see a lot of emphasis on improving access to their collections management, access, and disaster planning. While I don’t have access to their financials, it does seem like the Preservation Society does have the resources to support these endeavors. They have already made good progress on each of these fronts through grant funding, hiring new employees, and collaborating with other cultural heritage institutions. Overall, I’m impressed with the Preservation Society’s current operations and their efforts to improve them further.

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NOTE: All sources have been hyperlinked within the text.

Final Project, Part II: Plimoth Plantation

            Plimoth Plantation is a living history museum dedicated to presenting the history, separate as well as shared, of both the English colonists and the Wampanoag Natives during the earliest years of colonial settlements in the 1620s.  Unlike a more traditional house museum, which captures a moment frozen in time by hosting a collection of items and artifacts used and owned by the former residents of the house in question, Plimoth Plantation is an immersive environment in which visitors engage with staff members in a setting which recreates—as much as is possible in this modern age—the colonists’ Plymouth and Natives’ Patuxet villages in the mid 1620s.  In each village, costumed interpreters act as guides throughout the experience; in the Wampanoag Homesite, the Native guides interact directly with visitors as themselves while discussing and demonstrating aspects of their ancestors’ way of life, while in the English village, the interpreters take on the roles of actual colonists who lived in Plymouth in 1627, conducting all of their interactions with visitors completely “in character,” with the guides speaking with the same vocabulary and accents from their original homes in England that their characters would have used.  Combined with the carefully crafted homes, tools, domestic interiors, clothing, gardens, and all the necessities of ordinary daily life, the overall intention and effect is to give the visitor as close a sense of “being there” as is possible in the modern world.  According to the mission statement:

            Plimoth Plantation offers powerful personal encounters with history built on thorough research about the Wampanoag People and the Colonial English community in the 1600s.  The guest experience is at the heart of our work.  Plimoth’s unique and evocative setting, professional staff and compelling approach to history in an immersive environment combine to provide a guest experience that is at once authentic, engaging, educational and fun.  We strive for excellence in our work and are successful when a satisfied guest recommends us to family and friends.[1]

Plimoth Plantation was originally incorporated in 1947 by founder Harry Hornblower II, with the first house built on the waterfront in 1949, and the main site acquired from the Hornblower family (members of whom sit on the Board of Trustees to this day) in 1956.  The use of costumed guides began in 1969, with the roleplaying of actual colonists following ten years later.  The Native perspective, which Hornblower always felt needed to be depicted, began to be incorporated by the addition of the first “wigwam” in 1964.  In 1973 the Native American Studies Program (now the Wampanoag Indigenous Program) took over the Native exhibits, and has been responsible for all Native interpretation since then, with Plimoth Plantation finally becoming a truly bi-cultural institution in 2005.  “Plimoth Plantation’s programs and exhibits are the expression of an educational organization that is interested in telling the stories of all the people who lived in Colonial Plymouth, or Patuxet, as it was called by Native People. The Museum is deeply committed to recovering and interpreting these historic voices so that guests can experience more fully the complex and richly nuanced portrait of life in the 1600s.”[2]  The Museum is overseen by a Board of Trustees (headed by a Chair), Honorary Trustees, and a Museum Council.

Museum Collections

            A significant way in which Plimoth Plantation differs from more traditional house museums is the lack of artifacts on display—while I saw a few items at the Hornblower Visitor Center, and some others are depicted on the plimoth.org website, all of the items used or displayed at both the English Village and the Wampanoag Homesite are high-quality reproductions, many of which are made on site by artisans at the Craft Center. Understandably, original items would not be used for the living history exhibits, but it is a bit surprising that more of the period items in the collections are not on display.  (One room in the Hornblower Visitor Center includes reproductions of both Native and English clothing as well as some pottery, carved wooden chests, a bow and arrows, and guns.)  The collection items shown on the website—which are not easy to find; you have to go from the front page to “Plan Your Visit” to “School Groups” to “Field Trip Materials”[3], scroll down to “Visiting the Museum Sites,” and then click on the “Collections” links—vary by site:  the Wampanoag collection contains mainly archeological finds such as a granite hoe blade, a stone pestle and clay cooking pot, and a soapstone tobacco pipe and net sinker; the English collection features an oak baby chair, a Geneva Bible (preferred by the Separatists to the King James Bible, which was the official Bible of the Church of England), an armor breastplate, and an embroidered sampler; and the Craft Center collection displays original pottery and furniture, some of which have been reproduced for use in the English Village, along with reproductions of tools and a woven bag that were also crafted at the Center by Native artisans. 

            I didn’t have the opportunity to speak with anyone about the museum’s collections, so I don’t know if they feel the collection is too small to display, if space is at a premium, if environmental issues are a concern (the higher humidity near the ocean could definitely be problematic), or if those in charge simply feel that their time and money is better spent concentrating on their main mission of education through immersive experience; my best guess would be some combination of all of the above, with their greatest emphasis being on maintaining their current focus, since it is most central to their mission.  As for preservation, according to the mission statement:  “We are diligent in our care of original and reproduction artifacts, our living collection of plants and animals, and in our conservation of the Museum’s environment.”[4]  While this doesn’t go into detail about specific preservation techniques or what their disaster plan entails, I believe it shows that the Museum does take its curatorial responsibilities very seriously, so I’m not particularly worried about the collections in this regard.

Web Presence

            Based on what I’ve been told by people younger than me who grew up much closer to Plymouth, a school field trip to Plimoth Plantation is a semi-obligatory rite of passage for a great many schoolchildren in southern New England, and if your school didn’t drag your class along at some point in time, then your parents probably brought you and your siblings to make sure you got your obligatory dose of history.  All cynicism aside, simply due to its importance at the very beginnings of American history, Plimoth Plantation would be a major attraction for school groups and parents looking for an educational vacation spot regardless of its actual quality as a historical site; fortunately, though, not only is the Museum itself one of the best immersive historical experiences in the country, but the plimoth.org web site also demonstrates its commitment to the Museum’s educational mission by the amount and depth of information it contains for potential visitors or the simply curious, the helpful guides for teachers, and the fun, informative, and interactive materials for students.  Instead of continuing to babble on about the website, however, I’ll use two potential and perfectly plausible scenarios to demonstrate just how helpful the site can be to someone planning a Museum trip, as well as to someone else simply seeking more information.

            For example, let’s say you’re a fifth grade teacher who wants to schedule a field trip for your American History class.  First, head to the main www.plimoth.org page, go to “Learn”, and click on “Programs for Schools.”  This brings you to “Experiences for Schools;” under “Programs at Plymouth,” click on “Field Trips.”   Once you’re at “School Groups and Field Trips,” you have a number of different options—opening the “Reservations” link has suggestions for scheduling, explains the chaperone policy (one chaperone per ten students), more links for tour extras such as hands-on sessions, guided tours, and theme dining, and possible options for outside funding of your field trip.  “Book a Special Program” offers suggestions for how to customize your particular trip with those hands-on sessions, etc. that were mentioned above—you can even arrange for a sleepover visit if your students’ parents agree!  “Group Dining” explains the various options for keeping your students fed and happy: vouchers for café dining, catered lunches, box lunches, or a customized special event (OK, you probably won’t be doing that last one, but it’s always nice to know about).   “Parking and Access” covers how to get there, where to park the bus once you get there, and suggests where people with disabilities should park and which parts of the site are most accessible for them.  Finally, “Tips for Your Visit” covers all the usual topics—payment, bathrooms, restrictions, lost and found, what to do in case of an emergency—as well as a link to a Chaperones’ Guide, which includes information on how to prepare your students for their visit, and, in particular, how to behave respectfully to the Native people while at the Wampanoag Homesite. 

            You’ve gotten off to a good start, but you’d like even more information about the Museum, and more suggestions for planning the best trip possible, and perhaps even some lesson plans before the trip.  No problem—go to “Plan Your Visit” at the top of the page, scroll down to “School Groups,” and you’ll see a drop-down menu pop up; scroll down and click on “Field Trip Materials.”  This brings up “Teaching and Visiting Plimoth Plantation: An Educator’s Guide,” which provides you with a wide range of suggestions for how to make the most of your upcoming trip.  “A Focused Field Trip” suggests a number of different areas upon which you and your students may want to concentrate during the trip; “Gathering Information” describes several ways that students may want to collect and save information while onsite; and various activities are suggested that are suitable for either younger or older students.  “Visiting the Museum Sites” covers all of the main sites (the Hornblower Visitor Center, the Wampanoag Homesite, the 17^th-Century English Village, the Craft Center, the Nye Barn, and the Mayflower II), suggests questions that your students could ask the staff members at the sites and things to do while they’re at each site (notices how the smells differ from what they’re used to), and again emphasizes the need for cultural sensitivity at the Wampanoag Homesite.  Finally, the suggestion is made to ask your students to evaluate their trip—What did they enjoy the most? The least? Was it what they expected?—and to forward the comments to Guest Services at Plimoth Plantation, so they can use your students’ comments to continue to improve the Museum experience.

            Here’s a different scenario:  you’re a fourth-grade student who isn’t going on a field trip to the Museum, but perhaps you have to write a paper on some aspect of life in Plymouth, or maybe you find history fascinating and are doing research on your own to learn as much as you possibly can.  You come across the plimoth.org website and decide to check it out, so you go to “Learn” at the top of the page, scroll down to “Just for Kids,” and up comes another drop-down menu with the following links:  “Coloring Pictures,” “Plimoth & Patuxet Ancestors,” “Talk Like a Pilgrim,” “Homework Help,” “Make It At Home,” “Recipes,” “Stories,” “Thanksgiving Virtual Field Trip,” and “Thanksgiving Interactive: You are the Historian.”

            “Coloring Pictures” is what you expected it to be—pictures of the Wampanoag Homesite, the English Village, and Felix, the Mayflower II’s ship’s cat, all designed for coloring.  “Plimoth & Patuxet Ancestors”[5] has genealogical profiles of many of the English colonists, as well as essays about different aspects of children’s lives in the colony.  “Talk Like a Pilgrim” features some of the 17^th-century words used by the colonists, along with sound files so that you can listen to how they actually would have sounded if you want to practice talking like that yourself.  “Homework Help” has essays on various topics such as who the Pilgrims and Wampanoag were, what clothing they wore and what food they ate, how both groups built homes, and the role of children in both communities.  “Make It At Home” has instructions on how to make two different games, “Toss and Catch,” which Wampanoag children played, and “Fox and Geese,” which was popular with English children.  “Recipes” includes both Wampanoag and English recipes that you can make yourself (although they do recommend having an adult help you), and “Stories” are two very short stories, one from each community.  “Thanksgiving Virtual Field Trip” consists of two short videos, one of the Pilgrims and one of the Wampanoag, and also features a link to an e-newsletter so you can keep up with all the latest news from Plimoth Plantation.  Finally, “Thanksgiving Interactive: You are the Historian” is an award-winning activity in which you play the role of a “history detective” to find out what really happened at the first Thanksgiving in 1621, along with “The Journey of the Mayflower II,” another interactive adventure.  (If you want to play the Thanksgiving game on Thanksgiving, it’s recommended that you download the application well in advance because of slow response and loading times due to high levels of demand.)

            These are only two examples of how the plimoth.org website can be a useful and helpful adjunct to the overall Plimoth Plantation immersive experience.  No, it’s definitely not the same as being there in person, but it can provide a decent amount of information to those unable to attend in person, and the advance preparation it can provide to those who are planning a trip is truly invaluable.  (One small example: I was very thankful to learn that different groups of Natives are referred to as Nations and not tribes before I accidentally stuck my foot in my mouth!)  Amateur genealogists can find information on their Mayflower ancestors, people with disabilities can determine whether or not enough of the site is accessible to make it worth their while (some is, some isn’t, but the staff is aware of the problems and is working on them), and couples who love history can get married on site (but not in either of the villages, alas), in addition to teachers and families planning trips, and scholars--young and old, amateur and professional—doing their research.  The site isn’t perfect, of course—sometimes navigation is a bit awkward, and there are a number of dead links that are annoying—but overall these are minor inconveniences.  While Executive Director Ellie Donovan was specifically referring to historical crafts and trades when she said “I hope the reasons are self-evident when we say that it is vitally important to preserve our intangible cultural heritage,”[6] I believe the same can be said about the Museum as a whole, and if one sign of a museum’s success as a cultural heritage institution is a website that is helpful, educational, and enjoyable for a wide range of users, then Plimoth Plantation’s plimoth.org certainly fits the bill. 

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[1] “Who We Are,” Plimoth Plantation, accessed February 7, 2016, http://www.plimoth.org/who-we-are.

[2] “Presenting the Story of Two Cultures,” Plimoth Plantation, accessed May 1, 2016, http://www.plimoth.org/who-we-are/presenting-story-two-cultures.

[3] “Field Trip Materials,” Plimoth Plantation, accessed April 27, 2016, http://www.plimoth.org/plan-your-visit/groups/field-trips/field-trip-materials.

[4] “Who We Are,” Plimoth Plantation, accessed February 7, 2016, http://www.plimoth.org/who-we-are.

[5] “Plymouth & Patuxet Ancestors,” Plimoth Plantation, accessed May 1, 2016, http://www.plimoth.org/learn/just-kids/plimoth-patuxet-ancestors.  Further information is available at PlymouthAncestors.org, a collaboration between Plimoth Plantation and the New England Historical Genealogical Society.

[6] Ellie Donovan, “Letter from the Executive Director,” Plymouth Life, 14, no. 1 (2016), p. 1.