Pretty much every museum has them, unless they have a massive army of curators or registrars madly accessioning items as they come in the door. They are the dreaded . . . Collections Backlogs. [Cue the offstage scream.] The Museum Cataloging Process With the downsizing of the Silent Generation and retiring Baby Boomers, both of whom amassed a good many items during the post-World War II pro-consumerism era, museums are being flooded with items being…
When I put together my history bucket list on The Pragmatic Historian, I included as one of the items “Watch fabric dying and weaving within an old mill.” Well, I haven’t been able to watch the processes of weaving and dying fabric within a mill, but I did have an opportunity to take a tour of a woolen mill. Not far from where I live, in Randall, Minnesota, is a fiber arts mecca that started…
In nonprofit organizations that create cultural events, particularly museums and historic sites, we like to think that everyone in the general public is our audience. That’s the great potential — that every soul who lives on earth will wander through our doors and be enamored with what we have to offer. That’s not true, of course. Challenges in Reaching an Audience People have to know we exist, be able to find us, have time to…